Vloggers ride wave of interest in rural themes

Rural-themed content is making waves across major Chinese short video apps such as Kuaishou, Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

A five-minute clip on Xiaohongshu showing butchered cattle bones being turned into delicate mahjong tiles by a farmer-craftsman using only homemade tools has garnered 83,000 likes and 2,500 comments.

An influencer from a rural part of Sichuan province has acquired tens of thousands of followers on multiple video streaming websites by vlogging her journeys between remote villages while carrying a giant bamboo basket. Her adventures — mostly ending with purchases of farm produce from elderly farmers at roadside vegetable markets — are usually full of heartwarming personal tales.

Popular culture has long favored stories about deeper-pocketed urbanites, while rural life was largely absent from films and television sitcoms until recently.

A 2019-21 survey by Endata, a data analysis company, showed that only about 5 percent of domestic TV sitcoms were based on rural themes during that period. But that was already an improvement following a gradual increase as part of a national campaign to curb rural poverty and revitalize the countryside over the past decade.

The rise of social media and user-generated content has opened a window for the vast countryside to be seen, while also creating enormous business opportunities.

Li Ziqi found immense success as one of the first vloggers focusing on rural content. She has 16.4 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, and her more than 100 mini-documentary-length videos depict her as a versatile rural housewife doing the chopping, hewing, stewing, boiling, baking, growing and dyeing all by herself in an idyllic yard.

In a report released in September, Kuaishou identified more than 300 million users as being interested in rural-themed content. That was almost on par with the number of mobile internet users based in the countryside, which has surged in recent years and reached about 297 million in June, 2021 — about one-third of the nation's total — according to a survey by the China Internet Network Information Center.

Internet traffic is money. In 2022, more than 870 million yuan ($121 million) worth of farm produce was sold on Kuaishou, a stronghold of farmer vloggers, up 55 percent year-on-year, the company said.

Official recognition

The immense business prospects have earned recognition from authorities. While addressing a forum in Beijing in September, Zhang Guoqing, deputy director of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' information center, said rural livestreamers are needed for the cause of rural revitalization, a national strategy that aims to rein in urban-rural gaps in areas ranging from income to cultural diversions and infrastructure.

"I am pleased to see that as an emerging occupation, livestreaming is bringing a growing number of young people back to their rural hometowns, which instills momentum into the rural revitalization campaign," he said. In the past, the countryside lost large numbers of young workers to coastal factories, drastically tilting rural demographics toward the elderly.

In August, the Ministry of Commerce released a three-year action plan to boost e-commerce in China's counties and surrounding villages. As part of the plan, grassroots authorities were asked to encourage e-commerce livestreaming and cultivate local trademarks. Ministry figures show that online retail sales of rural products topped 1.12 trillion yuan in the first half of this year, up 12.5 percent year-on-year.

Also in August, after floods and heat waves battered many parts of the country, the National Rural Revitalization Administration issued a circular calling for greater efforts to ensure financially vulnerable food growers did not suffer. Among the many measures it outlined, the circular encouraged the purchase of agricultural products from affected regions and said organizations funded by public money needed to collaborate with e-commerce enterprises — which usually promote sales through livestreaming sessions — to support the expansion of farm produce sales. "Efforts are needed to guide financially strapped households in transforming their products into marketable goods and tangible cash, ultimately promoting stable employment and income growth," it said.

Wider benefits

While authorities mainly focused on village broadcasts' economic benefits, such content has a far wider significance.

Ding Xiwu, a student of traditional Chinese medicine at Yunnan Agriculture University, joined the ranks of a growing cohort of rural-themed broadcasters in 2022. Like many of his peers, Ding sold herbal medicines and other farm produce on his channel on Kuaishou. However, he went a step further, attempting to challenge the stereotypes facing agronomy students and bolster the appeal of such practical and interesting majors.

In one of his clips, Ding encouraged followers in high school to apply to his alma mater as a plowing machine roared to life in the distance, a scene defying the conventional image of a college campus. "We do not have to till the land every day," he assured them. The clip amassed more than 1 billion views across multiple platforms.

Ding, who has almost 300,000 followers on Kuaishou, said he never expected to become an internet celebrity when he started. "In the beginning, I was just trying to keep a record of my life and bring happiness to people around me. But it is a pleasant surprise that many people learn more about my university because of my vlog," he said, in tacit acknowledgment of the recruitment difficulties faced by many agricultural universities.

Ding has tried to make the most of his newfound fame. He worked with the university's authorities and rolled out a series of clips offering technical help to farmers grappling with a wide range of problems, such as a sick cow or a patch of underperforming wheat. "I hope more students studying agriculture can join me in the new generation of farmers," he said.

According to a survey by Kuaishou, there are about 216,000 vloggers on the app sharing know-how in areas including planting, animal raising and fishing. Such content adds up to 500,000 hours a day, and the app proudly proclaims itself a next-generation farming tool.

Cultural revitalization

The countryside has long been notorious for a lack of diversions such as sporting events and plays, which are cultural mainstays in larger cities with wealthier residents. The issue has appeared in the crosshairs of authorities seeking to revitalize rural areas — one stated aim of the campaign was to diversify the rural cultural landscape and help preserve some of its intangible cultural heritage, which is fading rapidly due to the lack of successors to aging masters.

Short video apps have joined the mission to enrich the cultural and sporting realms in rural areas. They have emerged as a major vehicle for promoting rural sports events such as Village BA, a wildly popular basketball competition launched in a rural part of Guizhou province that features amateur players, mostly farmers. By July, competition-related content had been viewed more than 300 million times on Kuaishou, and views of all rural sports events on the app totaled more than 500 million.

Liu Anxin was one Village BA player who gained online fame by vlogging his involvement in the event. The 18-year-old is from a rural part of Guizhou, which until recently was home to some of the country's most intractable poverty. He started sharing clips of himself practicing dunks in 2021.

"I received many encouraging words from my viewers, and more importantly, I made friends with some really good players whose advice helped me hone my skills," said Liu, who is currently applying for a place at a sports university.

The exploding popularity of Village BA and his passion for the sport enabled Liu to become known more widely. His near-perfect dunking skills earned him an invitation to a match in Guizhou that had almost 20,000 spectators in the stands, and millions more watching online and on television. "I was overwhelmed by the thunderous cheers from the audience," he said.

Kuaishou says more than 200 million of its users have an interest in content related to intangible cultural heritage, such as the clip on making cattle bone mahjong tiles. Many of the masters are tucked away in rural areas.

Qubiwuli, an ethnic Yi student-singer from a remote part of Sichuan province, is breathing new life into fast-disappearing Yi folk songs by remaking them with pop music elements — such as accompaniment with guitar and other modern instruments — and performs them before the camera. His six-member band, all high school classmates, has more than 180,000 followers on Kuaishou alone. "Many of our works were inspired by songs passed down from mouth-to-mouth by village elders," Qubiwuli said. "Older people are usually very shy and would not burst into song when they are sober. Therefore, I would trick them to sing by bringing them liqueur and then remember the tune by heart."

The economic and wider benefits promised by short video creations are being viewed by major tech companies as a way to fulfill their social responsibilities. For example, in January, Kuaishou launched a village broadcaster training program and promised to divert internet traffic to vloggers making rural-related content. Kuaishou said that in the first half of this year it had trained 100,000 rural residents to conduct village live broadcasts on the platform, equipping them with the necessary skills to livestream rural life, and promote sales of farm produce or traditional handicraft techniques. The effort has created 250,000 jobs in about 25,000 townships nationwide, the company said.