Live-streamers flock to eastern China’s e-commerce hub in search of fame and fortune, hawking wares online

When night falls in Beixiazhu, the 22-hectare e-commerce hub in eastern China jumps to life. The roads congest with auto rickshaws with open beds full of goods, forcing local authorities to intervene and direct traffic. Amid the sounds of vehicles rolling by, a cacophony of tearing tape fills the air as express delivery services rush to fulfil orders.

The bustling, sleepless village of Beixiazhu, located in the manufacturing hub of Yiwu in Zhejiang province, has quickly transformed its traditional export-oriented industry into a live-streaming e-commerce La La Land. Since the pandemic upended the lives of exporters in the city, many have turned to live streaming in pursuit of new opportunities and wealth. Yiwu, a county-level city with a population of 1.2 million, now has about 60,000 people working in live-streaming e-commerce, according to local government data.

One of those people is Xiang Nan, a moon-faced 32-year-old who spends his afternoons walking around the village looking for goods he can promote in his streams. Nearly every ground-floor shop in Beixiazhu features conspicuous signs with the words “supply chain” and “live-streaming hot-selling product”, signalling that they offer not only sample goods, but also supporting services for online salespeople like Xiang.

“Those people driving tricycles might have a net worth of millions of yuan,” said Xiang, pointing to the men crowding the street. “They drive tricycles during the day, and sports cars at night.”

This is the life Xiang aspires to. He said he wants to become an online celebrity, which has made a select few very wealthy by selling products online. Live-streaming stars like Viya and Xinba can sell as many goods in a few hours as a normal shopping centre might sell in a year.

Live-streaming e-commerce is a promising area for many in China. Even those who do not strike it rich could make enough money to support themselves. In the first half of 2020, live-streamers in Yiwu hosted more than 72,000 sessions, with turnover exceeding 9.8 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion), according to state broadcaster China Central Television.

Still, as people pour into the industry, it has become brutally competitive, making attracting viewers a daunting task.

Xiang, who hails from the poor inland province of Guizhou, has gone as far as dressing himself up as a grey-haired “grandma” on the short-video app Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok operated by Beijing-based ByteDance. “You need to have some mockable moments [to attract viewers],” he said.

But no gimmicks have helped Xiang repeat a stroke of luck he had last summer, when his team sold more than 200,000 yuan worth of products in one night.

“I put a series of chinaware on sale, and all of a sudden, we sold seven sets of those within 10 seconds,” Xiang recalled. The order numbers were so high that Xiang worried whether he had enough cash on hand to get the products from the factory and cover delivery fees.

That night proved to be an anomaly in his live-streaming career. He only earned a few thousand yuan this month, Xiang said, which is barely enough to cover his living costs. But he has decided not to give up live streaming.

“Everyone has a dream to become rich,” he said.

Yiwu is hoping that people with such dreams will pursue them in Beixiazhu, which is at the centre of the city’s e-commerce transformation with its dozens of low-rise buildings full of matchbox-sized shops.

The local government has actively promoted the e-commerce industry with beneficial policies. In 2016, it opened up the “Lugang e-commerce town”, which spans 1.5 million square metres. At the end of 2020, it introduced a document outlining how the city will support live-streaming e-commerce.

According to the document, any multichannel network agency that signs a contract with an Yiwu enterprise and reaches a taxable revenue of 200 million yuan, 50 million yuan, or 10 million yuan will be rewarded with 5 million yuan, 800,000 yuan, and 100,000 yuan, respectively.

The Chinese retail market is poised to become the first in the world with most of its sales coming from e-commerce, which is projected to make up 52.1 per cent of total retail sales in China this year, up from 44.8 per cent last year, according to a report by research firm eMarketer.

Yiwu, known as the source of many cheap Chinese-made goods such as Christmas decorations and socks, is capitalising on the growth of domestic e-commerce as exports have taken a hit. Travel restrictions for controlling the spread of Covid-19 have kept most international merchants away.

During a recent visit, the massive Yiwu International Trade City, the world’s largest small commodities market, was relatively quiet compared with the noisy and sometimes chaotic streets of Beixiazhu.

Yiwu has a history of trade. With little arable soil, the city’s history of commerce with wealthier neighbouring cities and counties dates back thousands of years. After China’s reform and opening up kicked off in 1978, helmed by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, Yiwu was one of the first places to take advantage of the changing political winds.

In September 1982, Yiwu opened up its small-commodity market, and it released the first official document in China to clearly recognise the legalisation of farmer vendors and professional markets.

The Yiwu International Trade City, a bazaar with over 70,000 stalls offering 1,700 categories of manufactured goods, witnessed the rise of trade from China over the last two decades as it lured buyers from around the world looking to source everything from shovels to shoes.

When the pandemic hit, however, business dried up. New rules in China kept foreigners from being able to enter the country, and travel bans elsewhere also reduced the flow of travellers. As a result, many merchants refocused on the domestic market.

Zeng Xiaoping, originally from a small village in the city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, was one of many young people looking for new opportunities in Yiwu two decades ago. Like many fellow villagers, the 42-year-old opened up her own shop in a big bazaar in the city, where she sold belts.

The shop provided Zeng’s family with a stable income for years, until the pandemic hit. Her business suffered a significant decline last year, leading Zeng to open up a clothes wholesale shop in Beixiazhu two kilometres away.

“The year of the pandemic, we didn’t have a single order; it was terrible,” Zeng said. “The situation 10 years ago was completely different. The International Trade Market was bustling at that time.”

Zeng, who has a son in college, sells clothes for prices ranging from a few yuan to dozens of yuan. The 30-square-metre shop is not profitable yet, as the higher annual rent of 300,000 yuan significantly raised her costs, she said.

However, Zeng decided to try her luck in live-streaming e-commerce.

The top players in the market include China’s biggest short-video apps: Douyin, with its 600 million daily active users as of August 2020, and Tencent-backed Kuaishou, which has 300 million daily active users and made a successful initial public offering in Hong Kong in February.

Taobao Live, owned by Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post, is the biggest player in live-streaming e-commerce by revenue. It generated more than 400 billion yuan in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2020, according to the company.

Brands and merchants are increasingly hosting live-streaming sessions by themselves on these platforms to connect directly with consumers. In the second quarter of 2020, live-streaming sessions hosted by merchants accounted for around 60 per cent of Taobao Live GMV, with the number of live-streaming merchants growing by 220 per cent year on year, according to Alibaba.

Before moving to Yiwu, 36-year-old live-streamer Zheng Liuping, originally from Anhui province, had tried different types of jobs since finishing middle school – he was a woodworker when he was 15 and he also spent time running a roadside stall in Huzhou, Zhejiang province. Now he live-streams every day from 7pm until midnight on Jinri Toutiao, another ByteDance-owned platform, where he sells kitchen appliances like pots and pans.

While there are always stories about people getting hundreds of thousands of orders in a single night, the best thing for most people to do while streaming is “be earnest and down-to-earth”, Zheng said.

In describing how e-commerce has become big business for Yiwu, Zheng said, “You can hear the sound of tearing tape, of express delivery the whole night. For example, if the merchants living next door had a big day, you can hear the sound even if you close the window.”

Wang Lei, another aspiring live-streaming influencer who quit his factory job to move to Beixiazhu, also said success in live-streaming e-commerce is rife with uncertainty.

“Maybe you won’t earn a single cent this month, and the situation might be the same next month,” said Wang, a man in his late 30s who sells small commodities like garbage bags and towels. “But when you are about to go home for Lunar New Year, you might earn an amount of money that would usually take you one or two years to earn.”

Wang compared chasing riches through live streaming to playing the lottery, noting that the odds are better in live-streaming e-commerce.

“People are buying lottery tickets every day despite the low chance of winning,” he said.

Neither Zheng nor Wang have won the live-streaming lottery yet. Zheng said the money he earned is just about enough to cover his costs in Yiwu, while Wang said his live-streaming room only has a small audience.

For Zheng, who has a 7-year-old daughter, Yiwu gives people many chances to start from scratch.

“Yiwu has a lot of opportunities,” he said. “Even though I’m not doing live-streaming any more, packing up parcels for merchants could earn 700 to 800 yuan one day if I am nimble enough. I don’t think there is another place for you to earn money in such a way.”

“Yiwu will never go downhill,” he added. “The stories about going downhill only concern individuals.”