Vloggers ride wave of interest in rural themes

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.