Disseminating Excellent Chinese Traditional Culture via Foreign Language Short Videos: A Case Study of Escape from the British Museum

Taking the short drama Escape from the British Museum as an example, this paper explores the path of Chinese excellent traditional culture spreading overseas through foreign language short videos. It's found that short videos have significant advantages in cross-cultural communication by virtue of their intuitiveness, emotional resonance ability and wide audience base. By analyzing the data of related videos on YouTube, this paper finds that videos of 1-5 minutes have advantages in terms of communication effects, and audio narration videos perform best in stimulating audience interaction. In addition, the incorporation of controversial issues (e.g., restitution of cultural relics) and universal emotions (e.g., homesickness) can effectively stimulate international discussions and cross-cultural resonance, while the localization strategy helps to enhance the video's accessibility and acceptability. The paper also proposes a communication strategy that adapts to the needs of fragmentation and depth, suggesting that content creators prioritize the use of audio narration and focus on socially significant and controversial topics to optimize communication effects. The study provides evidences for the dissemination of Chinese culture and the cross-cultural dissemination of other cultures.