龙马精神, AI, and the Difference Between Stamina and Spirit
reflections on a casual experiment
In the Year of the Horse 马年, one greeting we hear a lot is 龙马精神. Literally, it brings together two images: 龙 (the dragon) and 马 (the horse).
The dragon represents vision, vitality, and momentum that feels almost celestial. The horse represents endurance – the ability to keep moving, step after step, without spectacle. Together, 龙马精神 isn’t about brilliance or speed. It’s about sustainable energy, the kind that holds over time.
This idea has been sitting with me as I’ve been experimenting publicly with AI-generated content. Recently, I shared a short, vibe-coded video: the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac gathered around a table in a Jiangnan garden. It was noisy, colourful, and superficially festive. It also had plenty of flaws: the wrong animals duplicated, others missing entirely (no horse, oddly enough), visual confusion, and moments that made no cultural sense at all.
It had stamina, but not spirit.
The views rate similarly lower than my usual count across all my social media, but there was an interesting difference. On Chinese social platforms, it was either ignored or responded to with a polite New Year greeting. On English language platforms, engagement was significantly weaker than usual, and at least one person unfollowed me, despite my explicitly framing the video as an experiment meant to show both the potential and limits of vibe coding.
Over the next few days, I reposted two repurposed older New Year videos – imperfectly filmed, slightly hesitant in delivery, created before I had any sense of “best practices.” Those videos performed better across both Chinese and global platforms.
The contrast was instructive. AI has stamina. It doesn’t tire. It can keep producing indefinitely. But stamina alone doesn’t create meaning. And 龙马精神 helps explain why.
The horse isn’t about flash. Across cultures, it rarely is. Horses symbolise reliability, carrying power, and the ability to go the distance. English idioms surrounding the horse reflects this too: workhorse, staying power, strength to go the distance. None of these praise speed. They praise endurance with purpose.
Which brings me to the contrast between the flashy AI content and the uneven human-built content on my channels. There is no doubt that AI can increase stamina. It can extend our reach. But without human spirit – judgment, restraint, and accountability – it produces abundance that lacks coherence.
That’s not deceptive. But it is insufficient.
I’ll be exploring this distinction – AI-led versus AI-assisted creation, stamina versus spirit, output versus integrity – in a longer piece later this year. For now, this feels like the right place to pause.
龙马精神 isn’t a wish for more content. It’s a wish for energy that can be trusted. And not just for today – for the long road ahead.
©2026 Shelly Bryant
Tip for Chinese Social Media Users
One of the “best practices” I’ve established on Chinese social media, for the type of content I produce, is to add a decorative summary slide at the end of the video, which increases the completion rate, the save rate, and the overall engagement rate. My viewers seem to really appreciate the summary, with many of them saving the video specifically so they can review it.
Happy Chinese New Year, Shelly!