Live dreaming for the masses

The most popular video app you've never heard of

It's valued at more than $2 billion (1.75 billion euros; ￡1.55 billion), has more users than the population of the United States and United Kingdom combined and is the fourth most popular app in China. But if you've never heard of the livestreaming app Kuaishou (快手 kuài shǒu, literally "Fast Hand"), you're not alone.

On Kuaishou (or Kwai, as the English version is called), the stars are rural nobodies and their acts are worlds apart from the attractive urbanites paid to document branded lifestyles on mainstream apps like UpLive, YY and Six Rooms, or celebrity app Huajiao.

 

It is characters like these who have earned Kuaishou an unenviable reputation of being coarse and exploitative, an image that its CEO, Su Hua, takes issue with.

"In most cases, the videos are simple depictions of joyful moments in everyday situations," Su told the Chinese site TechNode.

Kuaishou's fan base is the 674 million-strong, lower-middle and working classes from parts of the country rarely depicted on mainstream TV or cinema screens - rural, undeveloped, mostly impoverished. They are the people who deliver your takeouts, serve your meals, manicure your nails and put together your iPhones. And what they sometimes lack in means or sophistication, they often make up for in enthusiasm, humor, innovation and authenticity.

To many of them, Kuaishou is a celebration of the "real China", as well as a rare, sometimes lucrative, opportunity to grab some limelight. Attention seekers perform outlandish stunts for clicks and cash, such as lighting firecrackers on their foreheads (or under their groins), quaffing down bottles of high-strength spirit or baijiu, or in the case of one foolhardy foodie in Sichuan, downing a full glass of super-spicy chili oil (he ended up in a hospital with severe tonsillitis and a stomach abscess for his trouble).

For less extroverted types, Kuaishou offers a chance to showcase real talent on a platform they can not only control, but directly profit from (fans show their appreciation by donating virtual gifts such as beer, flowers and fancy cars; these can be converted to real currency, with the proceeds split equally between the recipient and the platform). There are decent earners like Qi Zhi'ang from Liaoning province, who posts videos playing the guitar while his mother sings; the 17-year-old easily makes around 20,000 yuan ($3,000; 2,600 euros; ￡2,320) a month from his 65 million paying fans. Or more modest moneymakers like Tangshan taxi driver Zhao Xinlong, who moonlights as Zhao Long'er, nighttime raconteur, cracking ribald jokes to around 100,000 viewers who, together with advertisements for health products and Vietnamese "gold", make him a much-needed extra 6,000 yuan a month, according to The Economist.

And then there are the major players - the wanghong (網紅 wǎnghóng, "web celebrities"). MC Brother Li dropped out of school at 15 to become a mechanic; the 30-year-old now makes 1 million to 1.5 million yuan per month performing hanmai (喊麥 hǎnmài, "microphone shouting"), loudly rapping over the thumping techno typically found in provincial nightclubs. Aspiring "stream queens" can look to the success of Wen'er, whose energetic chats and hanmai performances have earned her 12 million followers.

Probably hanmai's biggest star, though, is MC Tianyou, a working-class from northeast China with over 17 million fans and a millionaire lifestyle, who raps about the tribulations of growing up poor and dreaming big in small-town China.

In January 2016, five years after Kuaishou's launch, China Unicom announced that Kuaishou was generating more traffic on its network than mobile behemoths such as WeChat and Weibo. Then in September, a widely shared article by Huo Qiming, who runs popular WeChat account "doctorx666", titled The Brutal Grassroots Phenomenon: A Snapshot of China's Countryside in an App, finally brought Kuaishou under the mainstream microscope.

The regions where Kuaishou is most popular - such as China's northeast - have much in common with the Rust Belt communities whose fortunes have declined so precipitously in the United States over the past two decades. For those without the wealth, connections or education to seek better opportunities, Kuaishou gives them a chance to seek out their dreams or demonstrate skills to an audience of millions - a kind of online audition. Selftaught artist and full-time electrician Lu Xiaoyu, for example, managed to secure a number of clients for his 3-D drawings and portraits after showcasing them on Kuaishou.

The future does not look to be getting any easier for China's live-streaming hopefuls.

Only the big hitters are expected to survive the impending cull, experts say. Six Rooms CEO Li Yan, for example, plans to use algorithms and big data to calculate which facets of live streamers are most lucrative - looks, accent, style - and search for performers who fit the "perfect" mold. Livestreaming may have started as an upstart revolution against the mainstream, but in the future it looks destined to become simply another part of it.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com.cn

The World of Chinese