Headline August 28, 2016/ ''' *JIANG YILEI* : CHINA'S MOBILE INTERNET STORM '''

''' *JIANG YILEI* : 

CHINA'S MOBILE INTERNET STORM '''

''PAPI JIANG IS BY FAR  the most popular online celebrity,'' said Kunkun Yu, chief executive of the Beijing-based online community app Linglong.

'''Many, many, that is millions by millions of  Chinese people see her as their idol''.  

JIANG YILEI  is the girl next door who rants about  dieting  and  nagging parents in the living room of her cluttered Beijing apartment. She has bangs, wears minimal makeup and own two cats.

Better known by her online moniker  Papi Jiang, Ms Jiang, 29, draws millions of viewers every week with her fast talking satirical videos.

In less than a year, her business associates say, she has accumulated 44 million viewers/followers  across multiple platforms. 

There is probably some overlap, of course, but the figure vastly outstrips the followings of such popular  YouTube  celebrities as Ryan Higa  [17.8 millions]  and Jenna Marbles (16.4 million).

Last month, Ms. Jiang's first ever live broadcast:

A rambling, unscripted 90-minute video  -was viewed more than  74 million times in one day. That was more views than Taylor Swift's latest music video, ''New Romantics.'' received on YouTube in four months.

True,  most things in China, are on a bigger scale than elsewhere. But even by Chinese standards, Ms. Jiang stands out, so much so that the Chinese outlets have taken to calling her:

 The No 1 online celebrity of 2016.

Ms. Jiang's meteoric rise reflects the fast-changing nature of the Chinese Internet and, in particular, its insatiable demand for content.

China's Internet has become increasingly mobile-driven with more than 92 percent of the country's  710 million Internet users now coming to the web via their mobile phones, according to a report published this month by the official China Internet Network Information Center.

They are using the Internet to shop, chat with their friends, and seek information and entertainment on apps like Weibe, a microblog platform, and Weixin, the social messaging app also known as WeChat.

This has led to the growth of what Chinese have taken to calling  zimeiti, literally  ''self-media,'' an umbrella term for self-published content on social media platforms.

Yang Ming, Ms. Jiang's business partner and former classmate at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, said in an interview, 

''We saw that self-media getting pretty big, so we thought, ''Should we try to do something with this?'' 

As recently as  mid-2015, Mr Yang said, not many people were making short videos in China, unlike in the United States, where  YouTube celebrities were already common.  

''They weren't being called short videos at the time,'' he said. ''They were just videos.''

Ms Jiang, who had returned to graduate school at the Central Academy  of Drama after working in the entertainment industry for several years, including as a stage actor-

And assistant director, started to experiment playing with elements that would become part of her signature style: a digitally altered voice, rapid-fire delivery and quick jump cuts.

Slowly, she began building an audience, a following, until one day last November when a video she made poking fun at Shanghai women and their tendency to drop English words into conversations went viral.

''I was shocked, scared to death,'' she said in a June interview with the Chinese website Sina. ''I thought,  'what am I going to do?' I couldn't even eat anything.''   

     

Since then she has made about 60  videos dealing with subjects familiar to educated young urbanites, like  cheating boyfriends, celebrity culture and regional dialects.

In one memorable example, she sounds off how she hates it when people in love constantly talk about their partners. In another she takes on the issue of gender stereotyping in China.

''Things you have definitely heard at some point,'' she announces to the camera. ''This job is too tiring. It's not suited for women.'' Jump cut. ''Playing basketball? Women are better off at home.'' Jump cut.

''A woman should have long hair.'' Jump cut. ''A male nurse? Ew.''

She signs off in the two minute video with what has become a catchphrase:

''I'm Papi Jiang a woman possessing both beauty and talent.

The Honour and Serving of the Operational Research on ''Progress, Societies, Life and Living'' continues. Thank Ya all for reading a sharing forward and see you on the following one.

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