During a particularly destitute phase of our research intervention, my coworkers and I were brainstorming side hustles and other fast breaks to augment our diminutive research salaries. One female coworker suggested live streaming. “I’m telling you, if we live stream our attractive male coworker eating noodles on the most popular gay dating app, we could make thousands every month. Tens of thousands.”
Seemed like a sound idea in principle, but tens of thousands? Come on.
She sighed and started logging onto various live streaming apps. After scrolling through images of hundreds of live streamers broadcasting their talents, we decided on a highly rated channel of a college-aged girl dancing— let’s call her Alice.
This was no Twitch or Facebook Live: live streaming in China is a direct pay-for-service model, no advertisers needed. Each user on the site pays a set amount of money to be converted into “gift” currency, which he or she can then “gift” the live streamer during the stream. At the end of the stream, the live streamer gets to cash out. It’s a bit like busking. Or stripping.
We watched Alice for the next fifteen minutes or so. There was a brief period of chatting with the audience, followed by prancing around and dancing suggestively. There’s no cumulative gift count, so we had to estimate the gift amounts by ourselves. At the end of fifteen minutes, she had made over 100 yuan ($15 USD).
Live streaming is one of those cultural hallmarks of modern China, embodying technological advancement, the emerging voices of the masses, and complete disregard for social consequences. In some ways, it feels liberating: like self-published novels or self-produced videos, it opens a traditionally restrictive art to the creativity of the commons. An estimated 320 million internet users have tried live streaming. It also seems like an equalizer: anyone can broadcast, as long as they have a decent phone and an internet connection. Previously unknown merchants and artists can now broadcast their talents and wares to thousands of viewers.
Live streaming experienced an absolutely meteoric rise, exploding to a market size of $3 billion in 2016. Every popular platform is getting in on it, as well as the unpopular ones: one blogger estimated 200 live streaming apps currently in circulation. Live streaming platforms may focus on video gameplay, performances (singing, dancing, juggling), advertising for goods and services, or other physical stunts. You might have heard about the eating live stream trend popular in Korea, which I’m about to get in on.
But like any new market, livestreaming has its challenges. Live streaming middlemen have emerged, taking over the role of traditional agents for hopeful, fresh-faced talent. At performance-based companies, the vast majority of live streamers are women, but the viewers are primarily men. As you can imagine, there’s substantial demand for cute girls dancing sexy, and this market is free-as-can-be and quick to pick up on the basics of exploitation. But there’s some pretty weird stuff out there too, including bizarre consumptive behaviors like drinking eggs, and dangerous stunts, such as live eel porn (Said eel porn star was arrested after her life-saving surgery. The Chinese government is good about protecting people from themselves). There isn’t great data, but empirical observations suggest that, unsurprisingly, the brunt of dangerous activities come from rural, low-income areas.
Of course, this wouldn’t be China without some form of censorship on a new technology. This year, China started seriously cracking down on live streaming apps, closing down more than 30 platforms. Since then, companies have started hiring their own internal censors who are at liberty to cut off a live streamer’s feed at any time. Topics subject to censorship include political activism, stigmatized subjects (like mental health and LGBT issues), and, of course, banana videos.
But live streamers with access to resources can still make it big. A handful of the most popular live streamers make $25–40 million yuan (USD $3.7–6 million) per year, and have achieved Net Celebrity Status.
Net celebrities(网红, wang hong, literally: net red) are China’s newest generation of superstars. In addition to live streamers, this group of millenials includes self-published writers, bloggers, comedians, fashionistas, and otherwise goodlooking people. They’ve become the newest investments for companies like Alibaba, and the most successful have incomes far exceeding that of Youtube celebs and even Chinese A-list movie stars.
Here is a sample of some female internet celebs:
If you’re thinking that you should probably check your racism, don’t worry; they all look the same to me too. In fact, they look the same to everyone, because they’ve all gotten more or less the same plastic surgery.
网红脸 (literally: net red face) is a specific set of facial features currently in vogue. You can probably tell from the pictures, but it consists of high cheekbones, double eyelids over gigantic eyes, a narrow, raised nose bridge, and a V-shaped jawline. Plenty of aspiring net celebrities get surgery to achieve this look when they first start livestreaming. In fact, those generous media middlemen will often cover this surgery for their new talent.
Unsurprisingly, the most popular procedures in China are for the face: double eyelid surgery, eye slit surgery, nose reshaping, jawline shaves, etc. (for comparison, the 2 most popular procedures in the US are breast augmentation and liposuction). I’m not a very visually observant person, but I know that plastic surgery is in demand because every day I pass 4 plastic surgery clinics on the way to work. It turns out that the cosmetic surgery industry was worth about 400 billion yuan ($63B USD) in 2014, and is expected to double by 2019. Interestingly, in 2016, 21% of customers were men. Sources mention the wealth explosion and mobile photo-editing technology as contributors to the rise, as well as the influence of plastic surgery capital South Korea (there have been anecdotal cases of Chinese citizens going to Korea for plastic surgery who couldn’t get back into China because they no longer looked like their passport photo).
But part of the issue must be cultural. Not that the US is the paragon in the battle against objectification of women, but I do perceive there being a narrower standard of beauty in China. We think of the US as preferentially rewarding skinny blondes, and we definitely have a long way to go. But here, you not only have to be pale and skinny, but you also need big eyes and small lips and a sharp nose and a narrow chin. In the US, it’s normal for friends to disagree on physical attractiveness — my med school roommates and I often found each others’ tastes abhorrent. But here, everyone I know agrees that my one attractive male coworker is a god. It’s as if the standard of beauty is always limited to the same miniscule percentage of the population regardless of diversity; to make up for the lack of diversity here in China, there’s a level of scrutiny of facial features that I’ve never experienced at home (There’s also a narrower margin for allowable gender roles, and I don’t meet those either).
Ironically, 网红 has taken on a rather negative connotation over time, referring to brainless women who have sold out for expensive handbags and plastic surgery (though universities will still teach you how to become one). Nowadays, if your face is too net red, you get super judged. It’s a lose-lose: If you’re ugly, you’re out. But if you’ve gotten plastic surgery, you also suck. Here’s a delightfully creepy piece by one of SFF’s Asian-American rising stars on the price of beauty.
I do want to give an honorable mention for one quirky, non-facial surgery in China: vaginoplasty is on the rise. In 2011, an estimated 18 million women received cosmetic surgery on their vagina, thanks to some ingenious market responder with absolutely no evidence. One of the department heads at my hospital suggested I do these on the side (in addition to hymen reconstruction) to augment my future income.
I told him that we would probably stick to live streaming for now.
