BEING different from many liverstreamers who sell products indoors, Liu Yuanjie likes to use the natural scenery of Xinjiang, including mountains, rivers and grasslands, as the background. Since the scenery is so incredible, many viewers of his livestreaming have questioned whether the backdrops are real at all. Liu then started looking for various ways to “interact” with the video background to prove the doubters wrong. He threw buckets and shoes into a river behind him and called in friends and horses as active props to prove that everything was 100% real. Now Liu has received more than 2.6 million likes on short video-sharing platforms. What he didn’t expect was that netizens then turned his slightly crazy actions into one meme after another, and Liu became an internet sensation. By this point, all the honey in his store was sold out. Liu, who is the director of the bee-keeping association at Yuli County of Bayingol Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, did not plan to add new stock to his store until all orders were fulfilled. “My team is not big enough and I am worried about our after-sales services. We must be responsible for the quality,” he said. In his recent short videos, he paid greater attention to the natural beauty of Xinjiang. “I don’t mind people saying the background is fake or the livestreamer is fake. I just want to say the beauty and honey of Xinjiang are wonderful,” he said. Before arriving in Xinjiang in 2020, Liu, born in 1997 in East China’s Jiangsu Province, had made many attempts to lift himself out of poverty. He worked in many different jobs after leaving school at 16 years of age, for instance, factory worker and cyberspace writer. He also launched startup programs as a way to improve his life; however, none of them succeeded. Liu visited Xinjiang in 2020. Observing the cattle and sheep, grasslands, snowy peaks and meadows of Xinjiang, Liu said he felt a healing touch from the region. His taste buds welcomed the delicious fruits in Xinjiang and gave him the courage to stay. In 2020 Liu began to sell agricultural products, including a type of locally produced pear, through livestreaming programs. In the initial 10 days of his live stream, there was not a single transaction. However, a week later, a video Liu shot about the custom of Xinjiang suddenly went viral, leading to the sale of nearly 30 tons of balsam pears. From 2021, he started to sell locally produced honey through livestreaming. Looking ahead, Liu hopes to use his influence to help the farmers in Xinjiang, who are not familiar with e-commerce, to sell their products. “Xinjiang is my second home,” he said. “The significance of my effort is not to lift me from poverty, but to lift my hometown from poverty.” (China Daily, Global Times) | 