Natural popularity

He says it took him about six months to get the lay of the land of this new terrain.

Two of his videos — one about identifying and avoiding mites, and the other introducing distinctive flowers and bugs in early spring in Beijing — went viral and thus helped him find direction.

"Those subjects should be frequently seen but somehow remain little known," Zhang says. "They also should be close to public life. And (the content should be) condensed and unique."

Now, most of his videos expound on things he has seen or heard, trending short videos shared by netizens, or questions from netizens. More than half of his works have each received over 1 million views.

Keeping it simple

Gui Haoxuan, who worked with Zhang on the Metog film, says she finds him to be easygoing yet meticulous.

"For example, he requires scriptwriters to avoid any technical language that laypeople may not understand. Any new terms of concepts must be explained clearly, and there's zero tolerance for knowledge barriers, or grammatical or lexical errors," Gui says.