Edible rats are China’s latest live-streaming stars
Like millions of rural Chinese people before her, when Xing Jianli was younger she left her village and went to a big city, finding work in a clothes factory. But now the 38-year-old is back on the farm and making more money than she ever did at a sewing machine. She grows peonies—bright flouncy flowers that flourish in the countryside around the city of Heze, in her home province of Shandong in eastern China. To sell them, she live-streams from her fields to a virtual audience who pay for bouquets by tapping on their mobile phone. On a good day she can make 3,000 yuan ($400), about a month’s wages in a factory and an “impossible” sum in the days before e-commerce, she says.
It is still not much compared to what live-streamers in China’s cities rake in by selling make-up, electronics and clothing. They have been doing so for nearly a decade, with top performers like Li Jiaqi, known as the “Lipstick King”, once selling 40m yuan-worth of goods in two hours. But Ms Xing is one of a growing number of Chinese farmers making good money on streaming platforms, injecting cash into the long-neglected rural economy. They sell everything from poultry to grapes. In 2023 some 1.4bn orders for agricultural products were made on Kuaishou, a streaming app popular in rural areas, 56% more than the year before. Alibaba, an e-commerce giant, says that between 2021 and 2024, villages in poor parts of China made sales worth 441bn yuan on its platforms.
Live-streaming has also created opportunities for middlemen. Feng Yanhui is a 30-year-old from Heze who buys peonies from farmers and re-sells them by live-streaming every evening. When the peony season is over in Shandong, she moves elsewhere.
Local governments are keen to foster the industry. Some offer training for migrant workers and college graduates if they return to their villages, teaching them sales scripts and techniques. On March 27th officials in Heze organised a live-streaming competition for local farmers to sell their produce using eight live-broadcast rooms. To inspire participants, they invited Li Xiaoxia, a local live-streaming celebrity who has 450,000 online followers. Ms Li, who sells fruit, made her name by interjecting English phrases, such as “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, into her sales patter.
Some sell not just rural goods to urban residents but rural lifestyles, too. They earn money by driving traffic on streaming platforms, getting gifts from audience members or, if they are popular, sponsoring products. The “Huanong Brothers”, a duo from the poor, mountainous province of Jiangxi, became famous by live-streaming their efforts to farm bamboo rats (large rodents which are eaten in some parts of China). They have 3.6m fans on Douyin, a streaming app. Li Ziqi, a young woman from the south-western province of Sichuan, posts videos of idyllic scenes where she harvests vegetables, chops bamboo, prepares traditional meals and wanders the forests, all to the sound of calming music. She has amassed over 28m followers on Weibo, a social-media platform, and in 2020 reportedly sold 1.6bn yuan-worth of products through her online store. Other streamers offer a different kind of spectacle by drinking dangerous amounts of liquor.
As more farmers take to live-streaming, competition is fierce. The newcomers don’t understand peonies, sniffs Li Hui, a Heze local. He is not too upset, though. This year he expects to sell half a million flowers on his live-stream. ■
Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world.