The script of "Medical Record No. 7" has a cover and the scripts of 6 patients are divided into volumes.
22-year-old Ren Yanxi "approached" AIDS in a special way.
Over the past two years, this college student and his classmates formed a team to create "Script Killing" with the theme of "AIDS Prevention".
They read books, read papers, watch documentaries, go to hospitals for investigation and observation, assume the identities of infected people and try to buy virus-blocking drugs... They create game characters based on real people, real events, and real situations to restore the experiences and feelings of AIDS patients.
"I shared needles" "I burned to 40 degrees Celsius and couldn't see clearly"... Different from browsing posters and watching videos, players who participate in script killing have to play a role, immerse themselves in it, and obtain information on AIDS prevention and treatment during the game. Understand the plight of people with AIDS.
In December 2023, after the 36th "World AIDS Day", the country's first "AIDS prevention" script "Medical Record No. 7" created by the Fuzhou Sunshine College student team was officially launched. The Fuzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which initiated and guided this creation, has high hopes for this form of "popularity among young people".
Today, for Ren Yanxi and his team, "AIDS prevention" is not just a long-completed writing project, but more like a "responsibility."
Ren Yanxi (standing in the picture) and team members are testing the script of "Medical Record No. 7". The pictures in this article were all provided by the interviewees
“Controlling the epidemic among young people will play a very important role in the prevention and control of the epidemic in the entire society.”
Zhang Hong has never played script killing, which does not prevent him from knowing that young people have Love of this form of play. The head of the AIDS Prevention Section of the Fuzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention heard that "playing this game is very immersive." He wondered if he could write a script to educate "players" about the spread and prevention of AIDS.
In his view, “Controlling the epidemic among young people will play a very important role in the prevention and control of the epidemic in the entire society.”
Previously, in order to promote AIDS prevention, the Fuzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention has tried many forms. In addition to traditional "posters", "manuals" and lectures, they also launched an animated image IP called "Fu Xiaoai", produced cartoons, and held Campus short video contest, release of "Anti-AIDS Diary" on new media platforms, etc.
"What do young people like?" Zhang Hong and his colleagues have been researching. They have tried emoticons and short videos. Is there any way to have a more "immersive" feeling? Until one time, he accidentally learned that "script killing is quite popular now."
In this type of game, players have virtual identities and exclusive stories, and experience the fate of others through "role playing". Zhang Hong thought, “Perhaps it can allow players to experience the life of AIDS patients.”
Two years later, this idea was put on paper by a group of young people.
In September 2021, 22-year-old Ren Yanxi was studying Advertising (Live Broadcasting) at Fuzhou Sunshine College. Usually, he works part-time in a script-killing store, serving as the host of the game, and also creates some scripts. After being introduced by the shop owner and going through a formal bidding process, he "won" the project of creating an "AIDS Anti-AIDS Script Killer".
A team of 7 college student creators was quickly formed, and one of the leaders was Sunshine College teacher Su Guang.
According to the teacher, the students who participated in the creation are all members of the school’s “Writing Training Class”. They come from different departments and grades, and are all "loyal lovers" of writing. Everyone "learns to write while writing", writing "tweets", "posts" and "scripts" that have greater market demand, as well as non-utilitarian novels, poems and oral history works.
In the screenwriting class of the "Writing Training Class", Su Guang once led his students to write scripts. In 2021, the script sales market is booming, and Su Guang once invited an author to the school for exchanges. Later, he heard student Ren Yanxi talk about the "AIDS Script Killing Prevention" project.
The traditional form of AIDS prevention propaganda is relatively "generalized", while script killing requires restoring a large number of real details on each character and presenting the time, space and scene where the character lives. Specifically, an AIDS prevention manual can tell readers how the virus spreads and how to prevent and treat it, while a script allows players to immerse themselves in the specific experiences and feelings of an AIDS patient at a specific moment.
Su Guang has been working in colleges and universities for a long time. He has learned that the AIDS epidemic on college campuses cannot be ignored. However, talking about this disease on campus still has a certain "taboo" flavor.
Su Guang is from Zhumadian, Henan. The county where his home is located is next door to Shangcai County, which gives him a special knowledge and understanding of AIDS.
Shangcai County is the hometown of Li Si, the famous Prime Minister of the Qin Dynasty, the hometown of China's Double Ninth Festival Culture, and is a "thousand-year-old county" certified by the United Nations Geographical Names Expert Group. In the 1990s, local villagers in Wenlou Village donated blood for a fee and shared a large number of needles, causing the AIDS epidemic. Today, decades later, the environment of the village is no longer the same as before.
Su Guang recalled that just two years ago, one of his friends gave up a well-paying local job because he heard about the past of Wenlou Village. This incident had a great impact on him.
He knows very well that Wenlou Village is developing very well today, with wide asphalt roads, beautiful ecological environment, and free medical services. However, some people are limited by their knowledge of AIDS and find it difficult to eliminate their stereotypes.
Su Guang has long known how AIDS spreads. He is opposed to putting "moral" shackles on patients, and he is even more opposed to discrimination.
"Back then, poverty was the root cause of paid blood donation." Su Guang said that when he learned that the students were going to create a script related to the prevention and treatment of AIDS, he immediately expressed support and looked forward to leading them to "grow in a valuable way."
Ren Yanxi (left) is discussing the plot with team members.
“Young people should know the real world”
In recent years, the overall AIDS epidemic in my country has been at a low epidemic level. Transmission through blood transfusions and blood products has been basically blocked, mother-to-child transmission and injection drug use have been effectively controlled, AIDS prevention awareness among key populations has continued to increase, the incidence of risky behaviors has continued to decline, and antiviral treatment coverage has reached more than 90% , the treatment success rate reaches more than 95%. The public no longer "talks about AIDS", the topic of AIDS is more open, and the medical and social environment faced by patients is more friendly.
However, the tasks of “popular science” and “anti-discrimination” are far from over.
Ou Yuyan, born in 2000, is one of the main creators of "Medical Record No. 7". She told reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily about the stories that happened around her - a classmate had relationships with multiple sexual partners without telling his girlfriend. He had physical abnormalities due to high-risk sexual behavior, suspected that he was infected with HIV, and secretly received the ITB. He took the medicine but didn’t tell his girlfriend the truth. After a childhood friend of Ou Yuyan was diagnosed with AIDS, her privacy was leaked, and her family was forced to move out of the original community, thus "losing contact".
In Ou Yuyan's view, whether someone "conceals the truth" or someone "experiences discrimination", fundamentally speaking, it is because people do not know enough about AIDS and the affected groups. "It is very meaningful for us to create this script." .
The real problem is that the remuneration for this public welfare project is meager.
Su Guang introduced that Sunshine College is a first-class application-oriented construction university in Fujian Province. The goal of running the school is to bring students closer to employment or the needs of enterprises. The "Writing Training Class" should meet the market's demand for high-quality texts, and will also organize the writing of poetry, novels and non-fiction documentary works. They once invited the chairman of the Fujian Federation of Literary and Art Circles to attend classes, and the lectures were open to the public.
When they first took over the "AIDS Anti-AIDS Script Killing" project, this team did not consider remuneration. In Su Guang's view, if all writing is for the purpose of making money, "there will be all kinds of troubles and contradictions if all is done for money." He hopes that students will think less about profitable things, do what they are good at, want to do, and are interested in, and not let money stifle creativity.
Led by Ren Yanxi, the students used their spare time to create.This subject matter is relatively sensitive and has extremely high requirements for accuracy and scientificity. Su Guang asked students to "not make up" and to ensure that all details are objective and true. To create characters, it is necessary to find real-life cases and real people who have sources and can verify them. It extracts symptoms, data, and feelings.
Once started, teachers and students all realized that AIDS patients are a completely unfamiliar group to them. Su Guang said that a lot of the information comes from documentaries, and the world presented by these materials "goes beyond the imagination of the players in the script." The weight of the story is heavy enough, and the impact must be appropriately reduced. The story frame can be "imaginative", but the "details" cannot be fabricated.
Young people spend a lot of time collecting information. Ren Yanxi read nearly 100 scripts and texts to conceive and establish the story framework; Ou Yuyan "watched nearly 200 videos (collected by everyone), and at least dozens of journal articles." She also read a lot of online posts about AIDS, "let's stop talking about more than 1,500 posts."
In some anonymous statements, Ou Yuyan saw that some people had just been diagnosed and were depressed; some showed off their "luckiness" of not being infected after engaging in high-risk behaviors; some sons confessed to "revenge" their father's harsh education methods; some elderly people were infected Later, he became seriously ill and suffered a mental breakdown that tortured his children.
The world Ou Yuyan saw confirmed Su Guang's previous concerns. As a teacher, he supported students to face the truth, but was afraid that they would be affected by negative events and emotions.
Once, in order to understand the emotional logic of killing a character in a script, Ren Yanxi went everywhere to buy HIV-blocking drugs at 3 a.m., and even queued up at the hospital early in the morning - "The doctor writes prescriptions very quickly," and he could get the drugs at his own expense at the door. . He still felt "anxiety" for five and a half hours. Ou Yuyan also came to the hospital to observe AIDS patients more closely.
In Fuzhou in October, the weather was still relatively hot. Some patients wore hooded sweatshirts, masks, sunglasses, and gloves to wrap themselves up tightly; some looked not very good, as if they were experiencing severe symptoms.
The HIV/AIDS clinic in this hospital is connected to other clinics. Ou Yuyan observed that someone was dragging their child toward them when passing by the AIDS waiting area. Some children looked in the direction of the waiting area twice, and were immediately asked by their family members to "stop looking."
In the process of sorting out the information, Ou Yuyan was deeply impressed by the story of the Red Ribbon School in Linfen, Shanxi. Once upon a time, there was a little boy in school whose parents were infected due to paid blood donations, and he suffered "mother-to-child transmission." 203 people in the village wrote a joint letter asking him to leave, and the letter even had his grandfather's signature.
Ou Yuyan said that she used to think that promoting "AIDS prevention" was the right thing to do. After seeing the story of "Xiaolu", she felt a "sense of mission" and "a sense of faith."
The story of AIDS patient Xiao Lu comes from a news documentary in the early 20th century. Xiao Lu was the first HIV-infected person in my country to face the camera. His real name was Lu Dingsheng. He struggled to survive due to illness and hoped to survive with the help of the public.
Now, Ou Yuyan can blurt out a confession from Xiaolu: "It is enough for me to be a sleeper on this road, so that the future AIDS prevention train can run over me. The railway track is your media... The locomotive is the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China The Ministry of Health (the original department of the State Council, now the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China), the carriage is every medical institution, and I am willing to be a sleeper."
"Real cases repeatedly touched the young people who wrote the script.
For example, originally, nearby residents avoided the Red Ribbon School, but as their attitudes changed, people were no longer afraid.
There is an online post saying that anti-drug police officers were bitten and stabbed by virus-carrying suspects during arrest operations and were unfortunately infected. They deserve to be respected and protected.
Ou Yuyan and her classmates believe that it is necessary to allow patients to gain basic understanding and respect, and to let more people understand scientific protection and diagnosis and treatment methods.
In the past two years, some people have left and some people have joined the main creative team. After revising the outline four times and completely rewriting the text of 60,000 to 70,000 words, "Medical Record No. 7" was finally completed. Each character represents a way of spreading AIDS, and the story frame is based on the development of China's AIDS prevention and control work. The creative team repeatedly verified the content to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of the details.
At the end of the game, he wrote down an important question
After being reviewed two or three times by professionals from the disease control department and again by experts in Beijing, in December 2023, the script "Medical Record No. 7" was released. Yes, officially launched.
This is a mystery story. Six people wake up with amnesia, and a doctor helps them recall the past. In order to simulate the dizziness and nausea that may be caused by the side effects of HIV-blocking drugs, Ren Yanxi specially set the scene of the story to be a big ship in the wind and waves. Through "Chasing Life", players experience the spread of AIDS as a character. Looking back on the creative process, Ren Yanxi said that each character's story background was written in 10,000 words, and even the doctor in the series game has a "character autobiography" of nearly 5,000 words.
After the script production was completed, the creative team recruited volunteers on campus to participate in "internal testing". Some students criticized the script for not being complete enough in terms of gameplay, while others said they were deeply moved and praised the script for its delicate emotions and good writing that could be "taken for awards."
As the core of the team, Ren Yanxi estimated from a young person's perspective - short videos may be excluded when promoting the prevention and treatment of AIDS, long videos cannot be read through, brochures are not a favorite, but script killing is possible. A script kill usually lasts more than 4 hours, so players have enough time to experience everything in the plot.
Zhang Hong introduced that Fuzhou CDC not only pays attention to young people. Among the elderly, many have limited scientific knowledge, weak awareness of protection, and resist testing. With the number of AIDS cases among the elderly in China rising, the Fuzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention has developed works based on literary and artistic styles and communication methods that are popular with the elderly, and has forwarded, sung, evaluated and promoted them through short video platforms.
In 2019, Fuzhou City was identified as the fourth round of national AIDS prevention and control demonstration area. In 2023, the fifth round of the National AIDS Comprehensive Prevention and Treatment Demonstration Zone in Fuzhou is launched, with the "Fuxiaoai" AIDS prevention publicity brand, the "1+1+n" AIDS prevention team and the "AIDS Check" intelligent AIDS prevention platform, etc. The innovative model was selected as an outstanding experience model in national demonstration zones.
Around the world, more and more new drugs and treatments are being developed for AIDS patients. In China, more drugs are included in medical insurance. An HIV viral load below 1,000 copies is considered "treatment successful."
“Patients without scientific treatment may have hundreds of thousands of copies, and the immune level of such patients is very low.” Zhang Hong said, “If it is less than 1,000 copies, it is basically an undetectable level, and the immune system will also slow down. Slowly returning to normal, the life span (of AIDS patients) will be almost the same as that of normal people." In his view, while treating AIDS patients like ordinary people, we should also treat the topic of AIDS with a normal attitude.
"The biggest advantage of script killing is that it allows a player to speak out loud about things that would otherwise be unspeakable." Ren Yanxi said, "Put these things on the table, use another identity to speak out, and face the objective reality. Question."
He explained that he did not want to offend any group, but just wanted people to talk openly. In this young man's opinion, people in China still have a sense of shame about sex, and the sex education he received was secretive. Sexually transmitted diseases are not limited to AIDS, but this disease has the strongest stigma, which comes from a "stereotype" and an inability to talk about "sex". Ren Yanxi believes that if "sex" cannot be spoken out loud, then sex education classes cannot be carried out. If society's stereotypes about AIDS patients are not reversed, wider virus testing cannot be promoted.
As of press time, Ren Yanxi and his classmates have sent 32 scripts to script killing agencies, one of which has been sent to Malaysia. After receiving the script, the operator usually asks the creator for the game manual; the creator will ask questions to verify whether the operator has read the script carefully.
"If it is a very general question, the store will just deal with it." After thinking carefully, Ren Yanxi hid a task at the end of the script, "At the end of the game, the host must be able to clearly tell the players that the nearest AIDS store to our store is Where is the place to get the virus-blocking medicine?" - This is the question designed by Ren Yanxi. In his opinion, it is more important than whether the game is fun or not.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily trainee reporter Fu Rui Reporter Qin Zhenzi Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily
