Culture & ArtsAI visuals support
A golden portal inside a gourd, flight on a bamboo stalk and daily life in an herbal shop tell “Hanging the Gourd to Heal the World” as a story where the human world and a fairyland intertwine.
01 / Background
Liandan AI Studio provided AI visual support for “Hanging the Gourd to Heal the World,” a scenario-question short for CCTV's “Exploring China Through Idioms.” The characters meeting, daily life in the herbal shop and the magical transformations described in the program's narration all needed matching images, so viewers could follow the story and understand what the idiom means.
The film first shows an ancient street market, then enters a fantasy world through a gourd, a golden portal and figures in the clouds. What links the real world and the fairyland is the gourd, which appears throughout, and the warm light that runs from start to finish.
02 / Creative Highlights
The herbal shop, the streets and the townspeople are the everyday scenes where the fantasy begins. Once viewers know where the characters are and what is happening, the magical changes that follow have something to stand against.
Again and again, the gourd and the golden portal connect the characters to the herbal shop, becoming the thread between the two worlds. Though the scenes move back and forth between reality and fairyland, viewers keep following the same gourd.
The city at sunset and the glowing sea of clouds are both in warm tones, so when the characters enter the new world, the feel of the images matches what came before. Through color, the fantasy passages merge with the story as a whole.
The sapling outside the herbal shop and the great tree it later becomes echo each other, turning the gap between “ten days” and “ten years” into the growth of a single tree. The ending shows patients being treated and crowds waiting in line again, bringing the magical adventure back to the theme of healing the world.
03 / Scene Breakdown
The short looks down on Runan Commandery in the Eastern Han dynasty, then settles on an old man with a walking stick and the gourd at the herbal shop door. Character, place and prop are all established within eight seconds.
City walls, rooftops and cooking smoke fill the frame, then the film cuts to a white-bearded old man holding herbs and leaning on a bamboo staff. Viewers meet this man first.
A yellow gourd hangs under the eaves of the herbal shop as the camera slowly pushes in. The narration says “a gourd hung there, also called a hu,” and this is the “hu” in the idiom.
The old man sees patients in his shop; as the sky turns from bright to dark, someone upstairs keeps watching the shop.
With the camera behind the patient, the old man listens and gestures with his hand. Warm yellow window light makes the shop feel ordinary and trustworthy.
An overhead shot of the golden city leads to silhouetted eaves and a few birds in flight; as the narration reaches “night falls,” the image darkens too.
A man in a dark official's robe stands upstairs with his back to the camera, looking down at the market. He is Fei Changfang, the market official.
The old man walks into a ring of light at the shop door and disappears; upstairs, Fei Changfang is startled, and at night the gourd is still glowing.
With his back to the camera, the old man walks slowly toward a golden ring of light at the door; the light grows brighter, and then he is gone.
Fei Changfang grips the window frame and leans out, eyes wide. The next shot cuts to the herbal shop at night, the gourd hanging glowing in the middle of the doorway.
The camera sweeps past a small sapling beside the shop door. For now it's just a detail; it only pays off at the end of the film.
Fei Changfang arrives at the door carrying a gourd, and the old man smiles and agrees to take him inside; the two step into the golden ring, and the image cuts straight to immortal mountains in the clouds.
Fei Changfang stands at the front door of the herbal shop with a gourd at his waist; inside, the old man looks up and smiles.
The two figures, seen from behind, are surrounded by the golden ring and mist; the camera pushes in to the gourd at the center of the ring, and then golden light bursts out in every direction.
As the golden light fades, a palace appears above a sea of clouds; two figures walk through the mist among the mountains, no longer in the human world.
The old man reveals who he is and gives a green bamboo stalk; Fei Changfang flies home on it to find the sapling at the door grown into a great tree, and he becomes a healer treating the crowds.
The two sit across from each other drinking tea at a low table wreathed in mist, as the old man tells how he made a mistake and was banished to the mortal world.
The old man turns and walks toward the golden ring; a green bamboo stalk glowing with golden light floats in the air, then Fei Changfang stands on it and flies forward over the sea of clouds.
After the sapling by the door, the next shot looks up at a towering tree. The narration says: he returned home after ten days, only to find ten years had passed.
Fei Changfang sits at a table taking an elderly man's pulse, with people waiting crowded behind him; the camera pulls back to show the courtyard under the great tree full of townspeople who have come to be treated.
04 / Storyboards & Final Frames
This episode had a complete storyboard script, with the shot size, lighting and action written for every shot. Below, the final frames used in the finished film are arranged in order. The shots of the old man walking into the ring of light, Fei Changfang arriving at the front door and the bamboo flight can be seen in the Scene Breakdown.
Shot 1.1
Extreme wide overhead shot: the city gate tower in the distance, streets and crowds up close, with cooking smoke and slanting sunlight creating depth.
Shot 1.2
Medium shot at eye level, angled slightly upward: a gourd hangs high at the shop door, with shops and lanterns on either side. The camera pushes in toward the gourd as the gourd and lanterns sway gently.
Shot 2.1
An over-the-shoulder shot of the old man from behind the patient, with the setting sun backlighting through the window.
Shot 2.2
An overhead shot of the market in golden evening light, using the sky to show that evening has come.
Shot 2.3
A low-angle shot of silhouetted eaves and passing birds as the sun goes down, matching the narration “yet he would mysteriously vanish.”
Shot 2.4
Fei Changfang stands at a second-floor railing looking down at the market. Shooting him from behind as he looks down makes his position relative to the market clear at a glance.
Shot 3.1
Side close-up: hand on the window frame, eyes wide, face lit by warm light.
Shot 3.2
A low-angle shot of the herbal shop at night, the gourd in the middle of the doorway glowing faintly, surrounded by lingering specks of golden light.
Shot 3.3
A small sapling beside the herbal shop door at night. It appears here once first; at the end of the film, it will have grown into a great tree in the same spot.
Shot 4.1
Standing at a table covered with medicinal herbs, the old man looks up with a brief smile, as if he knew all along that Fei Changfang would come.
Shot 4.2
The two figures seen from behind beneath the gourd, mist closing in around them as rings of golden ripples spread across the ground.
Shot 4.3
Ring after ring of gold encircles the gourd, then golden light fills the whole screen, completing the transition from the human world to fairyland.
Shot 5.1
Extreme wide shot: a churning sea of clouds with a palace in the distance, the scattered golden light making the image dreamlike.
Shot 5.2
The two figures seen from behind, walking through mist among the mountains. Tree shadows and layers of cloud spread out together, with fairyland right beneath their feet.
Shot 5.3
The two sit facing each other in the immortal mist, tea and snacks on the table, matching the narration where the old man reveals his story.
Shot 5.4
The old man stands in the clouds with his back to the camera beside a golden ring, matching “now that my sentence is served, I will return.” Showing only his back leaves the sense of parting for viewers to feel.
Shot 5.5
A green bamboo stalk in midair, glowing with golden light, every node and leaf clearly visible. It carries a spiritual aura and is plainly no ordinary bamboo.
Shot 6.1
When Fei Changfang returns, the first thing he sees is still the sapling by the door, this time in daylight.
Shot 6.2
Then a low-angle shot of a great tree in the same spot, its trunk thick and its branches blocking out the sky. Cut together, the two images show the difference between ten days and ten years.
Shot 6.3
Fei Changfang, now in a gray robe, sits at a table treating an elderly man, with townspeople lined up behind him, backlit by the setting sun.
Shot 6.4
A high view of the courtyard under the great tree, filled with people waiting to be treated, bringing the story back to “Hanging the Gourd to Heal the World.”
05 / Script Excerpts
06 / Results
This is a roughly 1-minute-16-second 16:9 program excerpt showing the AI visuals Liandan AI Studio provided for “Hanging the Gourd to Heal the World.” Through the characters and the gourd, the images connect the ancient city and fairyland, so that beyond the narration, this allusion has clear images to watch.
Case Study
A gourd hangs at the door of an herbal shop.
Every evening, the old man who sells medicine vanishes.
Fei Changfang, watching from upstairs, calls the next day bearing gifts and follows the old man into the gourd.
This is a short from a scenario question on CCTV's “Exploring China Through Idioms”: contestants watch the images, then name the idiom “Hanging the Gourd to Heal the World.” Here's how this minute or so was made.
01
The story has two people and two treasures: the old man and Fei Changfang, the gourd and the bamboo stalk. Before making any shots, we pinned down these four.
The old man has a round face and a white beard down to his chest, and leans on a bamboo staff with a red tassel; Fei Changfang wears a navy official's robe in the first half and switches to a gray robe in the second, so his change from official to healer shows in his clothes alone. The gourd had to “carry an immortal aura,” and the bamboo had to “have a spiritual aura, not be ordinary bamboo”; both lines went straight into the script.
After that, every shot with a character used the character sheets as references. So from the market to fairyland and back to the herbal shop, viewers always see the same old man and the same Fei Changfang.
02
From dusk to nightfall, the narration says only “night falls”; everything else is told through light.
As the old man sees patients, warm yellow sunset fills the window; next come an overhead shot of the golden city and birds over the eaves; by the time the old man vanishes, the image has changed to the herbal shop at night, with only the gourd glowing. Inside the gourd, it's golden mist and clouds again.
As the narration reaches “night falls,” the image moves from the golden city to silhouetted eaves and flying birds.
03
The storyboard script's earliest design had three steps: the old man stands beneath the gourd as golden ripples spread at his feet; he taps the gourd with his staff; he and the gourd are wrapped in mist and slowly disappear.
Each of the three images looked good on its own, but strung together it took three shots to tell one thing. In the final pass we compressed it into a single action: the old man walks slowly into a ring of golden light at the shop door, vanishes, and the light fades. Walking too fast looked like jogging, so we deliberately added the word “slowly” when generating.
With his back to the camera, the old man walks toward the golden ring of light and vanishes into it. One shot tells “jumping into the gourd.”
04
In the script, the bamboo was like a glowing dragon with Fei Changfang riding on it. The first-draft images had plenty of drama, but he was turned sideways, rising in place, with no sense of where he was going.
Drawing on images of “flying on a sword,” we set two requirements: he stands on the bamboo, and the bamboo flies forward. We first generated a separate full shot of the bamboo stalk, then had him stand on it, keeping only a few bamboo leaves so they wouldn't upstage him.
The glowing bamboo first appears on its own, then Fei Changfang stands on it and sweeps forward over the sea of clouds.
05
“Away from home for ten days, he returned to find ten years had passed” is the hardest line in the whole story to tell in pictures.
We also tried showing time through the city's spring, summer, autumn and winter. What we kept in the end was the tree by the herbal shop door: it appears once as a sapling at night, is still a sapling when he returns in daylight, and in the next shot becomes a towering tree seen from below.Same spot, and viewers make the connection at a glance.
The sapling cuts to the great tree seen from below as the narration says: he returned home after ten days, only to find ten years had passed.
06
“Hanging the Gourd to Heal the World” is one of nine AI story films we made for “Exploring China Through Idioms,” alongside “The Tiger Guards the Apricot Grove,” “Nüwa Mends the Sky,” “The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountains” and others, aired on CCTV-1.
The most useful lesson from this film is to ground every magical plot point in something concrete: a gourd connects the human world and fairyland, a bamboo stalk carries a man in flight, and a tree shows the passage of time. Viewers don't need to read the original text; they can follow the story from the images. The same approach works whenever a tourism, science or brand story film needs to show an “invisible change.”
FAQ
Simply having the character jump into the gourd tends to generate strange movement. We changed it to an action that is easy to generate and easy to follow: the old man walks slowly into a ring of golden light at the shop door, vanishes, and the light fades, with the next shot showing the glowing gourd. A single shot makes “entering the gourd” clear.
Find something that appears both before and after. This film uses a tree by the herbal shop door: it appears twice as a sapling, and after Fei Changfang returns, the film cuts to a towering tree in the same spot, so viewers understand that a long time has passed without reading the subtitles.
Before production, make character sheets that spell out face shape, beard, clothing and props, such as the old man's white beard and red-tasseled bamboo staff, and Fei Changfang's navy official's robe. Every shot with a character is then generated with the character sheet as reference and checked against the shots before and after.
This one started with a rough cut; in January 2025 we refined it shot by shot according to the storyboard script, remade key shots such as entering the gourd and the bamboo flight, finalized it in mid-January, and it aired with the program in February.
Approach
We first made character and prop reference images for the old man, Fei Changfang, the gourd and the bamboo stalk, then filled in the look, shot size and lighting shot by shot. The characters' meeting and the pulse-taking use close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots, while the market and sea of clouds establish the setting.
When entering the gourd, the positions of the characters, the ring of light and the props stay consistent; in the bamboo flight, he stands on the bamboo as it flies forward, and the brightness of the golden light matches the shots before and after, so the whole passage feels continuous.
A sapling and a great tree show the passage of time, and the edit strings together the visit, fairyland and the return to the human world. Liandan AI Studio provided the AI visual support; the broadcast version of the program, with narration, subtitles and program graphics, tells the allusion in full.
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