Hong Kong vloggers keeping Cantonese alive with money-spinning YouTube channels
While many fear Cantonese may be in decline, for Hong Kong’s online stars it has opened a gateway to thousands of followers and lucrative careers
Known as vloggers, people who keep online video diary blogs, the outspoken young internet users delight their audiences each week with lifestyle tips, funny anecdotes and general opinions on Hong Kong society.
They adopt an informal, friendly style for short videos often filmed alone in their bedrooms, amassing hundreds of thousands of fans. The online advertising revenue they receive is enough to give some of them a full-time income.
They are mainly followed by Hongkongers, but also appeal to those abroad; there are an estimated 120 million Cantonese speakers across the world. Some vloggers will also occasionally adopt Chinglish – Cantonese-influenced English – in order to amuse their fans, or to help followers understand certain English slang terms.
One such vlogger is Pui Lai-ting, or “Sister Mary”, who has joined digital media company VS Media to concentrate on making videos full-time. The 21-year-old former retail worker has almost 200,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, and has received more than 27 million video views since she started vlogging in August 2011.