About Peony Evening News

Peony Evening News

Peony Evening News (Chinese: 牡丹晚报, pinyin: Mudan Wanbao), also rendered in English as Mudan Evening Post, is a Chinese-language comprehensive evening newspaper published in Heze, Shandong Province. It is sponsored and published by the Heze Daily Press, the publisher of the Heze municipal Communist Party organ Heze Daily, and since 30 October 2012 it has been operated by Heze Mudan Media Co., a company formed jointly by Dazhong Newspaper Group and the Heze Daily Press. The paper appears five times a week, about 240 issues a year, and covers the whole of Heze and its surrounding areas; it is described as one of the most influential newspapers in the city. Its name — Mudan, the peony — is taken from the flower for which Heze, historically known as Caozhou, is famous throughout China.

Origins in the Caozhou Evening Post

Peony Evening News was founded in January 1995 by the Caozhou Daily Agency. It was based on the earlier Caozhou Evening Post and was published using that paper's original domestic serial (CN) number, a common arrangement in the Chinese press system of the 1990s, in which a new title inherited the publishing licence of a predecessor. The sponsoring agency took its name from Caozhou, the historical name of Heze: the prefecture was reorganised as the prefecture-level city of Heze in 2000, and the Caozhou Daily Agency correspondingly became the Heze Daily Agency (Heze Daily Press), publisher of the municipal party organ Heze Daily, which had been founded on 1 October 1991 and was formerly titled Heze Dazhong.

Within the Heze Daily Press, the evening paper was developed as the group's lifestyle and general-interest title alongside the party organ. Heze Daily itself was rated among Shandong Province's "top ten" newspapers, and its literary supplement is called Caofeng, after the old name of the city — a naming pattern the evening paper shared in taking its identity from local symbols.

An evening paper for Heze

As a comprehensive evening newspaper, Peony Evening News was positioned differently from the morning party daily. Evening papers in China traditionally emphasise social news, city life, culture and service information for readers after the working day, and the Mudan title served that role for Heze, a largely agricultural prefecture-level city in southwestern Shandong. It is published in simplified Chinese and is classified as a comprehensive city newspaper.

The paper's publication rhythm in its mature form is five issues per week, totalling about 240 issues a year. Its distribution covers the whole territory of Heze — the districts and counties administered by the city — together with surrounding areas beyond the city boundary, and reference accounts describe it as one of Heze's most influential newspapers.

The 2012 reorganisation under Heze Mudan Media

On 30 October 2012 the paper's operating model changed substantially. Dazhong Newspaper Group, the Jinan-based publisher of Dazhong Daily and Qilu Evening News and one of China's largest newspaper groups, joined with the Heze Daily Press to establish Heze Mudan Media Co., Ltd. The new company took over the unified operation of two titles in Heze: Peony Evening News and Jinri Heze ("Heze Today"), the local edition of Qilu Evening News.

The arrangement brought a provincial group's capital, advertising networks and management methods into the Heze market while leaving the paper's sponsorship with the Heze Daily Press. Since 2012, therefore, Peony Evening News has been published by the Heze Daily Press and operated commercially by Heze Mudan Media — a division of roles typical of Chinese newspaper groups in the 2010s, in which party-press ownership is retained while market operations are corporatised.

Online presence through China Heze Net

The paper's recorded official web home is China Heze Net (heze.cn), the Heze Daily Press group's news portal, which carries the Peony Evening News name in its reporting and publishes the paper's digital editions, including full page-image editions of the printed paper. Bylines in the portal's coverage — "Peony Evening News all-media reporter" — reflect the group's converged newsroom, in which print journalists file simultaneously for the newspaper, the website and social platforms.

New media operations

The digital development of Peony Evening News is organised through its new media centre, also known as the visual centre of the Heze press media group. The centre operates four local mainstream media brands — Peony Evening News, Heze Kuaibao (Heze Express), Heze Zhibo (Heze Live) and Heze News Net — across close to twenty platforms in total, including a WeChat official account, a Toutiao account, a website, a Douyin account and a Weibo account. It is described in local accounts as the strongest and top-ranked new media operation in Heze.

The group's short-video performance gives a measure of this reach. The Peony Evening News Douyin account, launched in 2018, had by April 2021 published 3,778 works, accumulated 54.547 million likes and exceeded one billion total plays, with more than one hundred million plays in the year 2020 alone. For a newspaper rooted in a mid-sized inland city, those figures show how completely its centre of gravity has shifted toward platform distribution, even while the five-times-weekly print edition continues.

The peony city it serves

The newspaper's name ties it to the defining symbol of its city. Heze, the ancient Caozhou, is known as the Capital of Peonies in China: in 2006, after expert review, the peony and herbaceous peony division of the China Flower Association formally conferred the title "Capital of Chinese Peonies" on the city. Local tradition traces peony cultivation in Heze back some 1,500 years; the legends of the Heze peony were entered in China's third national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2011. One of Heze's urban districts is itself named Mudan (Peony) District, and the city's annual International Peony Culture and Tourism Festival draws millions of visitors each spring.

Peony Evening News journalists cover this civic identity from inside it: the paper's reporters document the festival, the peony industry's expansion into oils, foods and tourism, and events such as the celebrated 2012 occasion when the calligrapher Ouyang Zhongshi wrote the characters "Capital of Chinese Peonies" — coverage the paper later retold in its own pages. The evening paper's peony reporting is part of how a flower cultivated in Heze for centuries has been converted into a modern city brand.

Position in the Heze media landscape

Peony Evening News occupies the popular, city-life tier of a media system headed by Heze Daily, the municipal party committee's organ. Between them, the Heze Daily Press titles cover the full range of local print journalism: official and policy news in the morning organ, and social, cultural and consumer coverage in the evening paper. The addition since 2012 of Qilu Evening News's Heze edition under the same operating company consolidated Heze's newspaper market further, and the group's converged new-media brands now reach audiences far beyond the print circulation of any single title.

Summary

Peony Evening News (Mudan Evening Post) is a comprehensive Chinese-language evening newspaper founded in Heze, Shandong, in January 1995, succeeding the Caozhou Evening Post under its serial number. Sponsored and published by the Heze Daily Press, it has been operated since 30 October 2012 by Heze Mudan Media Co., jointly established by Dazhong Newspaper Group and the Heze Daily Press. It publishes about 240 issues a year, reaches all of Heze and neighbouring areas through print, the China Heze Net portal and a large multi-platform new-media operation, and takes its name from the peony, the emblematic flower of its city.