STORY: From his kitchen in Beijing, Yu Bo is working a marketing campaign to attach China with America – one slapstick cooking video at a time.
:: Yu Bo
37-year-old Yu has spun up an alter-ego as an envoy for fast Chinese language cooking briefly English-language movies posted to RedNote, a Chinese language social media app and search engine.
His 136,000 followers, together with 1000’s in the US, ship him each day questions on Chinese language meals and life in China.
“It’s been so loopy! It’s so loopy that it’s like I’m talking probably the most non-standard English to my international pals, however they nonetheless like me. At the moment, I used to be just a little… truly, I used to be just a little scared as a result of I believed, will everybody suppose I’m unhealthy? Or will everybody deal with me like a joker? However later, I discovered that they love me.”
At a time when tensions between Washington and Beijing are excessive, it would seem to be the percentages are in opposition to him.
Greater than half 1,000,000 Individuals downloaded RedNote earlier this yr, days earlier than a proposed U.S. ban on the favored Chinese language social media app TikTok.
Now, with an April fifth deadline set by the Trump administration for TikTok to discover a purchaser, Yu’s facet hustle may very well be set for extra change.
Washington officers have mentioned TikTok’s possession by ByteDance makes it beholden to the Chinese language authorities.
RedNote is privately owned and valued at $17 billion.
Yaling Jiang, analyst and founding father of ApertureChina believes RedNote will profit from TikTok’s troubles.
“I believe the TikTok refugee phenomenon has already ended sadly, nevertheless it similar to what number of different viral moments have ended, which is okay. However what RedNote can do with this viral second is that I believe they’ve been attempting to make use of it as a gas for one more potential IPO in Hong Kong, as a result of via this phenomena now, world traders, world customers know them, They know these potentials and know the way totally different it’s from all the opposite Chinese language apps, from Tik Tok, from Weibo, which is sensible for the corporate.”
The uncertainty would not part Yu, who continues to cook dinner, submit and join extra along with his new discovered American viewers.
Source link