
Meet China’s new live-streaming e-commerce star: an English-language tutor who lost his off-campus teaching job
- Former off-campus English-language tutor Dong Yuhui has become China’s hottest live-streaming e-commerce host, as stars Viya and Austin Li Jiaqi fade away
- Dong’s success has prompted employer New Oriental Education & Technology Group to hire more bilingual live-streamers
What separates Dong from the vast number of live-streaming hosts in the country is his shtick: he uses quotations from various poems, relevant English phrases and even musical accompaniment to describe the goods he sells and his point of view about the world. That somehow gives his audience a sense of being transported back to high school, where their thirst for knowledge is nurtured by teachers – the difference in this case is that they can just buy the goods that Dong discusses by clicking an on-screen button.
“From appearance to background, I’m a very normal person,” Dong said in a video interview with Chinese media GQ Lab. “But being a teacher means I can help to change [the lives of] young people.”
The teacher-turned-salesman’s online popularity on Douyin has even translated into increased investor interest in Koolearn Technology Holding, which operates the live-streaming account of New Oriental. Koolearn’s shares in Hong Kong tripled in value the past week and closed up 54.19 per cent to HK$16.56 on Wednesday.
For New Oriental, Dong’s success has prompted it to hire more bilingual live-streamers, each with a monthly pay of between 20,000 yuan (US$2,966) and 40,000 yuan, according to job posts published on third-party recruitment website Boss Zhipin.
Both New Oriental and Dong did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Chinese top influencer Austin Li Jiaqi’s absence imperils various 618 campaigns
The sudden rise of Dong, who grew up in a small village in northern Shanxi province, comes a time when more established live-streaming e-commerce stars like Viya and “Lipstick King” Li are away from the limelight for various reasons.
China off-campus tutoring icon now a live-streaming star

Dong, who claims that he has trained half a million students in English, said he now only sleeps three to four hours a day because of his new-found fame online. “I used to live-stream three to five hours a day with one session, but now [fans] are asking me to [do more shows],” he told GQ Lab. “So I work at least six hours a day with two live-streaming sessions. I’m doing interviews or preparing for live streaming [when I’m not on the show].”
“If [New Oriental’s live-streaming business] can operate very well without me, I might choose to find some rural area to be a volunteer teacher when I have enough savings and my body can’t tolerate this [workload] any more.”
