Adam Minter, Columnist

Chinese Populism Lives in a Video App

Kuaishou is the place to go for clips of men shoving firecrackers down their pants. Don't underestimate it.

December 27, 2017 at 11:00 PM UTC

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."

Also, a corn farmer on a ladder.
Photographer: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

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Yang Yang, a 22-year-old Chinese corn farmer, spends two to three hours per day streaming video of life in his cliffside village to smartphones across China. He spends lots of time clinging to a cliffside ladder, one hand on his selfie stick, while he banters with fans about village life.

It's hardly riveting television, but in China it has an audience: In just two months, Yang has managed to earn more than 1 million views and 45,000 regular followers on Kuaishou, an online video app favored by the 73 percent of Chinese who live in small cities and villages.