THE last 12 months saw an increasing number of “wanghong,” or “Internet celebrities” in Chinese, of all shapes and sizes, young and old, male and female, go viral as they attracted followers with their charisma, unique content, outlook and personal style. The following are some Internet celebrities that hit the headlines, for various reasons, last year.

Tumbling beauty

In November, the video clips of a 23-year-old woman tumbling like a roly-poly toy in Xi’an, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, attracted more than 1 billion viewers on Douyin.

Dressed in Tang Dynasty-style clothing, the performer, Feng Jiachen, rotates freely on a round iron base in the shape of a bowl. She appears to defy gravity while greeting audiences with movements so elegant that they seem effortless. However, they are far from it.

Feng’s lower body is tied with a T-shaped frame fixed to the bottom of the bowl. Her weight — no more than 50 kilograms — ensures she always ends upright.

She has to control the base using lower-body strength, and her knees are left bruised after each performance.

A rural idol

Li Ziqi, 29, became one of the most popular Chinese vloggers on video-sharing platform YouTube, with more than 8 million users subscribing to her channel by the end of last year.

It was in 2016 that she first decided to film videos recording her idyllic rural way of life and portray traditional Chinese aesthetics. In her videos, Li, wearing traditional dress, shows the charm of Chinese cuisine and folk craftsmanship by doing everything from scratch and displaying each step clearly, one after another.

In the videos, she uses natural ingredients to cook various dishes, harvests grapes to dye cloth, embroiders flowers and creatures on cloth, and makes furniture with planks and bamboo. She has also spent two years making paper from tree bark, brushes out of rabbit furand crafting other stationery from natural materials.

Rustic style

In March, Lu Kaigang, a 20-year-old villager from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region’s Nanning City, posted a video on Douyin, in which he struts like a model wearing a dress made from fishnets.

He then filmed dozens of similar videos showing how he channels his “inner diva,” moving in tempo with poppy background music under a stone bridge, across a narrow alley, in a derelict factory, down mossy steps, and through the ridges and furrows of fields.

He turned the countryside into his runway and made fashionable outfits and accessories from readily available materials, including bamboo sticks, reeds and plastic bags.

Although he never had professional training, Lu Xianren, as he is also known, nailed the supermodel strut from studying models as a child, by watching fashion shows on TV.

His countryside homage to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show gained him more than 3 million followers on Douyin.

‘Useless Edison’

On Dec. 31, 2019, Geng Shuai, better known as Shougonggeng, posted a clip on Kuaishou which shows him converting a diesel engine into a stylish stereo that also functions as a humidifier. It received more than 114,500 likes from viewers.

In his small workshop in Hebei Province’s Yangcun village, the 31-year-old handicraft expert has created hundreds of quirky contraptions over the past two years, including a sword-shaped skateboard, a hollow steel hammer which can be used as a bag, a soybean grinder rotated by riding a stationary exercise bicycle, an automatic hair-washing machine which requires the user to hang upside down by their feet and an earthquake-proof noodle bowl that allows the diner to continue munching through a seismic shock.

The lip-service man

Li Jiaqi was arguably the most sensational livestreaming anchorman in China last year.

The 27-year-old, hailed as the No. 1 lipstick salesman, once sold 15,000 lipsticks in five minutes during a one-on-one selling competition where he faced off against Alibaba founder Jack Ma during a Singles Day shopping gala in 2018.

A violence reaction

He Yuhong, better known as Yuya, is a vlogger who used to impress viewers with her uncanny step-by-step transformation into celebrities, including Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr. and the Mona Lisa.

On Nov. 25 last year, a video she posted on Sina Weibo was widely discussed by online users. However, this time, the focus was not on her consummate makeup skills but on her courage in revealing the fact that she was a victim of domestic violence.

(China Daily)