STORY: From his kitchen in Beijing, Yu Bo is operating a marketing campaign to attach China with America – one slapstick cooking video at a time.
:: Yu Bo
37-year-old Yu has spun up an alter-ego as an envoy for quick Chinese language cooking briefly English-language movies posted to RedNote, a Chinese language social media app and search engine.
His 136,000 followers, together with 1000’s in america, ship him every day questions on Chinese language meals and life in China.
“It’s been so loopy! It’s so loopy that it’s like I’m talking essentially the most non-standard English to my international buddies, however they nonetheless like me. At the moment, I used to be a bit… truly, I used to be a bit scared as a result of I believed, will everybody assume I’m dangerous? Or will everybody deal with me like a joker? However later, I discovered that they love me.”
At a time when tensions between Washington and Beijing are excessive, it would look like the chances are towards him.
Greater than half one million Individuals downloaded RedNote earlier this 12 months, days earlier than a proposed U.S. ban on the favored Chinese language social media app TikTok.
Now, with an April fifth deadline set by the Trump administration for TikTok to discover a purchaser, Yu’s aspect hustle could possibly be set for extra change.
Washington officers have mentioned TikTok’s possession by ByteDance makes it beholden to the Chinese language authorities.
RedNote is privately owned and valued at $17 billion.
Yaling Jiang, analyst and founding father of ApertureChina believes RedNote will profit from TikTok’s troubles.
“I feel the TikTok refugee phenomenon has already ended sadly, but it surely similar to what number of different viral moments have ended, which is ok. However what RedNote can do with this viral second is that I feel they’ve been attempting to make use of it as a gasoline for one more potential IPO in Hong Kong, as a result of by this phenomena now, international buyers, international customers know them, They know these potentials and know the way completely different it’s from all the opposite Chinese language apps, from Tik Tok, from Weibo, which is sensible for the corporate.”
The uncertainty does not part Yu, who continues to cook dinner, publish and join extra together with his new discovered American viewers.
