Dressed in the exquisite cheongsam, a mandarin gown in varied colors for females with flowing hair, Wang Qiaochu, a student of USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, is present in front of her phone’s camera alone. In her self-made videos, she would normally spend about 25 minutes on recommending a few Chinese classics about the renowned figures. During the pandemic in 2020, she created her personal reading account “book reading from Qiaochu” and now she has become an excellent content creator of Bilibili knowledge sharing, with her book-reading videos receiving over 3 million views and over 100,000 followers.
Lower speed, but better effect
Wang’s first post came on April 24, 2020. The video, where she introduced several biographies of major political leaders in Chinese history (Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Mao: A Biograph,Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Zeng Guofan Biology) lasted about 26 minutes but raked in 224 thousands views with 964 pieces of discussion fizzing across the screen .
As told by many, Wang is keenly aware of the short video time. But “I don’t want to sacrifice quality for rushed spread,” she said. “It is impossible to dissect all the takeaway in a book in just 1 or 2 minutes.” In an interview with China Youth Daily, Wang shared her “willful” try --- her first post on Bilibili took about 30 minutes but has become a “shocked” success.
Wang does not upload on social media to become popular. Rather, she wants to make 12 book sharing clips in her account, one video to be updated for each month. She was also warned against the risk of losing fans for being a “slow content creator”. However, after thinking it through, she has her reason. “One should have time to grasp a thorough understanding of the books before they share them out,” she said.
Accompanying Wang’s not so many clips till now are an increasingly bigger bunch of followers who get inspired from her work. Some, while busy preparing for the cut-throat graduate entrance examination in China, could still not refrain from watching every clip she posts and find new interest in the Party’s history through her shares. Junior high school fans take notes while watching the video and become enlightened about living faith.
Learning application for better rural revitalization
This year, Wang Qiaochu has also started to leverage her influence gained on the video platform to help with the rural revitalization in Daliang Mountain, Sichuan Province, apart from making book-reading videos. She has participated in several social practice activities organized by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, traveling between Shanghai and Daliang Mountain to conduct work including research, product selection and promotion.
During this process, she and the team members found that the freshly-picked matsutake mushrooms deteriorate the next day due to the lack of the preservation technique, a thorny problem faced in selling the local mushrooms. As a result, the premium matsutake mushrooms, trapped in the remote mountain, went underpriced, even unmarketable.
Viewing this, the social practice team of Shanghai Jiao Tong University helped local farmers to contact manufacturers with drying and preservation techniques, in an attempt to sell matsutake mushrooms directly to potential consumers. The article Matsutake mushrooms from Daliang Mountain, for the smile of local children and the feature video A virtuous person must have company posted by Wang Qiaochu received nearly 100,000 views. The social practice team from SJTU sold the matsutake mushrooms worth about 70,000 RMB in one month. According to Wang, she would love to“contribute to rural revitalization with the power of reading”.
