An article about a Chinese video app went viral recently. Posted on China's social media platform WeChat, the article "Cruel stories of the grassroots: the truth about the Chinese countryside via a video app," offered a disturbing snapshot of rural China.
According to the author Huo Xuanji (alias "Doctor X"), the short video app Kwai (Kuaishou in Chinese) was the fourth most popular app in China despite being unheard of by many. The app was the No.1 video app in 2015 and had a huge 184 million active monthly users in March of this year.
The author, a history graduate, said that the app is home to vulgar and revolting videos uploaded by predominantly rural users and offers a glimpse into the psyche of rural China.
Videos uploaded on the app include a variety of self-abusive images, ranging from a middle-aged woman eating lightbulbs, glass and bugs (her video went viral several days ago and caught the attention of police for fear that the woman was being abused) to a man who sets off firecrackers in his own groin.
The author attributed the unusual actions to two motivations: attention and profits. "Everyone wants to get other people's attention. But for the people who mistreat themselves in the videos have no money, no good education, no social status and no good looks."
He went on to list other viral videos on the app, including children who do not look like their age and imitate degenerate adults and country rappers who embrace violence, gangster culture and ultra-nationalism.
The mainstream Chinese world only focuses on first-tier cities, while the life of the 674 million rural people -- almost half of China's population -- have been unnoticed for too long, the author argues. The world mirrored by the app and the world represented by big Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are two isolated, separate worlds.
The article has been read by millions of readers and received innumerable comments. Some leaving comments on the now deleted post praised the author for noticing the rural world while others argued that the videos are circumstantial and not representative of the vast Chinese countryside. Pundits and online commentators have generally criticized the article. An article posted on the WeChat account of the Beijing Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Youth League committee in Beijing, accused the post of "igniting conflict between different social classes."
This is not the first time that a story involving rural China has gone viral online and sparked controversy. During the Chinese New Year this year, a post about a Shanghai woman dumping her boyfriend after having a low-budget dinner in his rural hometown received much attention online. Though the article was later found to be fabricated, discussions about urban and rural China went on for quite a while.
The gap between the urban and rural worlds is prominent in China, with drastic differences in people's income, medical and social insurance and education. While the gap has arguably narrowed in recent years, people in the countryside still finds themselves struggling with numerous problems and receiving much less attention than their urban counterparts.
