At 8:00 pm, 22-year-old Coco begins live streaming from her dormitory in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province. For the most part these streams involve her singing or chatting with those watching the broadcast online.
A busy college student, Coco only works part-time as a live streaming host so she doesn't end up under too much pressure.
"Sometimes I broadcast for two hours a day, and if I'm in a very good mood I might broadcast for six to seven hours," Coco said. Although she is not earning too much at the moment, Coco is still satisfied with the job.
"I like singing and I have more than 1,000 followers already," Coco said.
"It's enough for pocket money."
While Coco has only been streaming for about two months and is still a newbie in the industry, Yue Cheng, better known as "Weihai Dashu," has already earned some fame after working as a host for about a year.
While in many people's minds, a host or hostess gets by on their looks, Yue won his popularity for cooking and eating seafood. His culinary shows have proven very popular. Just three months after he began, he brought in 526,000 viewers for one live show.
Though they live in different areas and focus on different content, Coco and Yue do share one thing in common: They are both from Northeast China.
Northeast China, which covers the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, has a huge presence in the live streaming industry. Although no specific data exists, a large number of the most popular hosts on comparatively large live streaming websites are from Northeast China.
As to why this is the case, many industry analysts link the rising number of online hosts from this specific region to its slowing and even stagnant economic development.
Economic pressures
According to a report from the official Wechat news account Toutiao, Northeast China, which used to be a heavily industrialized area, has been undergoing major economic changes since the late 1990s. As a result, the large population that were once its most valuable resource have become a burden, leading to a massive outflow of people leaving the provinces to find work elsewhere in the country.
The emergence of social media and this new occupation seem to have provided an opportunity for Northeastern Chinese who want to stay in their hometowns while earning better income.
Liu Xi - a producer at Colorise Film, which has signed dozens of online streaming hosts - told the Global Times that the number of performers and students studying performing is huge in Northeast China. He mentioned that you can even see traditional song and dance performances like errenzhuan in small restaurants. However, while demand for these performances at places like restaurants is limited, the Internet provides unlimited room for growth.
"Also, due to the huge amount of performers, they don't often get chances to perform at more high-profile venues even though they have the spare time to do so," Liu said.
"The monthly income of an ordinary live streaming host may not seem very high in a big city, but it's very good for someone in a third- or fourth-tier city. That's why more and more people in Northeast China have joined the industry in recent years," Liu Yang, the person in charge of the Beijing branch of talent agency Redu Media, told Toutiao.
