Bilingual livestream draws viewers for harvest season in Shenyang

Peng Bo has become much busier interacting with netizens since her video promoting local rice was published last month.

In the video, Peng, deputy director of the cultural and tourism bureau of Yuhong district in Shenyang, Liaoning province, garnered a lot of attention and likes as she seamlessly switched between her fluent English and northeastern dialect while livestreaming in a rice field.

"The video is one of the four main promotional videos for Yuhong," said Peng. "As it happened to be the harvest season for rice, we decided to shoot in the rice field."

Within just two days of its release, the video had accumulated tens of millions of views on various online platforms.

Born in 1983, Peng graduated from Shenyang Normal University with a major in English, and became a civil servant in Yuhong, mainly responsible for translation and interpretation.

In June, Peng became deputy director of the district's cultural and tourism bureau.

"After I took the position in the bureau, I collected historical information about the district to find the stories of Yuhong," she said. "I found Yudong was the first place that started planting rice in Shenyang."

To create a contrast, she decided to promote rice in English and the northeastern dialect. She had previously tried Mandarin with the northeastern dialect, but the contrast "wasn't strong enough, so we finally chose English". "Also I am the English promotion officer of Yuhong," she said.

She and her colleagues contacted the district's agricultural and rural affairs bureau and asked them to help recommend several high-quality grain growers, she said. "We captured videos when they were busy harvesting rice and invited a villager to introduce his rice," she said. "Then we had lunch together with them in the field, presenting our love for the land and rice."

The creative team consisted only of her and another employee from the district government, she said, adding that the video's popularity was somewhat accidental.

However, she found communicating with netizens very enjoyable.

"In two days after the video went published, I replied to over 3,000 comments," she said.

"I found that they were quite curious about Northeast China, and I have added a few friends from the comments section on WeChat."

After the video went viral, the villager featured in the video, Zhao Heping from Wanjin village, and the other four farmers who left contact information at the end of the video have become increasingly busy.

Farmers in the village sold over 100 metric tons of rice within a few days after the video was posted.

In recent years, tourism bureau officials from all over the country have showcased their talents and gained internet fame through popular short videos.

In 2021, Liu Hong, director of the tourism bureau of Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Sichuan province, received widespread acclaim for a video where he dressed up as a character from the well-received martial arts TV series Xiao Ao Jiang Hu, aka Smiling Proud Wanderer.

In 2022, Xie Wei, director of the tourism bureau of Suizhou city, Hubei province, appeared in ancient costume to promote the local thousand-year-old ginkgo tree, unexpectedly gaining internet fame with a humorous twist.

Last year Du Bo, director of the tourism bureau of Tahe county, Heilongjiang province, wore traditional attire of the Ewenki ethnic group and endorsed the beautiful local scenery amid the snowy forest, introducing countless netizens to Tahe, a relatively unknown small county.