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After another round of livestreaming on Friday, Shi Linjiao saw her followers on TikTok climb to 64,000. After graduating from a music conservatory in eastern China's Zhejiang Province in 2019, the 24-year-old girl found herself a job in new media operation in her home province of central China's Hunan.
"The pay was decent enough, but I felt lost sometimes," she said. Having grown up in the countryside, deep down she felt she was not meant to live in the city.
Before the Spring Festival holiday, she decided to quit and come back home to start her own business with two childhood friends. She hopes to promote her hometown and local specialties on livestreaming platforms.
Shi is from Shibadong, a mountainous village of the Miao ethnic group in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.
She wears Miao ethnic costumes and a fresh flower picked from the roadside every time she livestreams. She presents local food, natural landscapes and cultural lives to her viewers.
Sometimes she receives over 100,000 views by simply doing farm work.
During Friday's show, she sang folk songs in front of two phones on tripods. She gained another 2,000 followers during the show and received virtual gifts from over 800 viewers.
Shi and her brothers and sisters lived on their mother's humble income since their father died. The situation turned for the better after the government launched targeted poverty alleviation campaign.
As more fellow villagers invested themselves in developing and producing locally-grown products, she came up with the idea of becoming a self-employed spokesperson.
Supported by her friends, together they tested the waters of short-video shooting and livestreaming.
"We shot some short videos and uploaded them to internet platforms to accumulate fans," she said. "It was indeed arduous during the first several months as we learned almost everything from scratch."
After they attracted a certain number of followers, they decided it was time for livestreaming.
"Livestreaming is very good, and we attracted several thousand new followers after each show," she said.
Livestreaming has brought them income and expanded the exposure of local products and stimulated sales. "I wish to help the villagers earn more money," she said.
"It's never easy to get people's attention, especially internet users'. But we have perseverance and we are willing to learn," she said.
In order to present better livestream shows, she has learned folk song technique from an experienced singer.
