During holidays, some Chinese people who work in big cities and return to their hometowns in small counties have found that short video platforms, such as Douyin or Kuaishou, begin to feed content into their algorithms that bring both familiar and the unfamiliar feelings.

The unfamiliarity comes from the fact that they had never encountered these content creators while living in big cities, while the familiarity lies in the use of local dialects to introduce traditional foods and specialties from their hometown counties.

Across China's vast county-level regions, a trend led by "local influencers" is quietly taking shape.

Rooted deeply in local culture, these influencers leverage their profound understanding of regional traditions and products to boost the county economy through short videos and livestreaming on social media platforms.

Unlike their urban counterparts, often seemingly glamorous, county influencers speak in local dialects, creating content against backdrops featuring simple county streets, farmland, or rural courtyards. They showcase local specialties such as cured meats, sweet potato noodles, and farm-fresh eggs, unexpectedly attracting large followings and generating commercial returns.

The 2025 No.1 Central Document, China's annual rural policy blueprint, emphasized efforts to strengthen county-level industries that enrich the lives of local residents by developing rural specialty industries and expanding income channels for farmers. It also proposed to "promote high-quality development of rural e-commerce," providing policy support for county influencers to promote local agricultural products through livestreaming and short video marketing.

By creating authentic and relatable content, these county influencers are boosting the sales of agricultural products, stimulating catering consumption, and tourism. Such efforts have become one of the engines driving rural revitalization.

Authenticity is the true secret

As the rising sun bathes the streets of Juye county in East China's Shandong Province, the aroma of breakfast drifts from roadside stalls, blending with vendors' calls in the local dialect.

Wang Miwen sets up his smartphone. Flashing a broad smile at the camera, he shouts in a thick Juye accent; "A sip of Juye's pot soup warms both the heart and the stomach!" The camera pans to a steaming pot of soup with mutton offal bubbling in a rich milky broth, promising a wave of warmth and remarkable flavor to viewers.

Soon, the video garners thousands of likes on Douyin, with the comment section flooded by local users: "Send me the address, I want to try it!" "I go to this place often too!"

Wang, a "local influencer" from Juye county in Heze city, has connected the taste buds and hometown sentiments of Juye's 900,000 residents with short videos, amassing 66,000 followers on Douyin.

From roadside roast chicken stalls to peony flower exhibitions, from freshly harvested sweet potatoes to newly opened restaurants in the county center, Wang's videos capture not just the daily lives of neighbors but also the new development of the county economy.

In 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic led to the temporary closing of Wang's stir-fried chicken restaurant business. Out of boredom, he posted a video of steaming stir-fried chicken from his restaurant on Douyin, accompanied by a caption in his hometown dialect. To his surprise, the video went viral and drew a wave of local customers.

"I realized this was pretty fun as I kept filming," Wang recalled.

He began filming videos for his friends' restaurants, initially in exchange for simple tokens like a meal or a pack of cigarettes. Gradually, more small businesses in Juye sought him out to promote their new shops or specialty dishes.

"The county is small, and there are few ways to promote businesses," Wang said. "With physical stores struggling these days, helping them with publicity is a good thing."

One of Wang's most memorable experiences was helping an elderly woman promote her "invincible grilled chicken necks" in 2021. Her daughter, who was working away from home, asked a friend to approach Wang: "Miwen, could you make a video for my mom?"

Wang agreed without hesitation, capturing the elderly woman's skilled hands grilling chicken necks, her cheerful chatter, and the story of her "secret family recipe." After the video was posted, long lines formed at her stall the very next day, and business became so brisk that the woman could barely keep up.

Today, when Wang walks down the street, people often call out, "Brother Miwen!" Fans recognize him, chat about the restaurants featured in his videos, and laugh as they say, "I tried the place you recommended!"

"Authenticity is my key element," he said. "No matter how good a video looks, if the food is bad or the environment poor, it'll only backfire when customers visit."

Unintentionally, Wang has also become a "tutor." Many stay-at-home mothers and young people in the county seek him out to learn video editing and filming, hoping to follow in his footsteps.

"I didn't have any connections and just figured things out on my own," Wang said. "But if anyone wants to learn, I'll teach them." He hopes more people will tell Juye's stories through short videos, spreading the county's vibrant local life even further.

Chasing youthful dreams in ancient town

With the rise of local influencers in county regions, their value has been recognized by government departments.

In Lufeng county, Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, Yanzi, a 24-year-old woman who calls herself a "post-millennial tea farmer girl," has attached appealing labels on social media. Though young, she owns a 2,000-hectare ancient Pu'er tea tree garden farm in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, leisurely brewing tea and painting in an ancient town, leading an enviable "retirement-like life," and having found the life direction that her heart has always yearned for.

However, behind the screen, she is striving hard for her dreams, and her story is far more wonderful than what is shown in the videos.
At the beginning of 2024, during a trip, Yanzi accidentally came across the Heijing Ancient Town in Lufeng county. This town, known as a "living fossil of Ming and Qing dynasty architecture" and one of the four major ancient towns in Yunnan, boasts a quaint beauty that even many people in Yunnan are unaware of. The antique buildings and the serene and distant scenery instantly captured her heart.

While most of her peers chose to return to the county seat in pursuit of a stable and comfortable life, Yanzi made a bold decision. In April 2024, she resolutely brought the tea from her home and traveled hundreds of kilometers to Heijing Ancient Town to start her entrepreneurial journey.

In this unfamiliar town, she is both the owner of a Pu'er tea shop and an online "tour guide" through the ancient town.

Every day, she busily juggles tasks, from shooting videos, editing materials, and live-streaming, to taking netizens on tours of the ancient town.

To make her live-streams and commentaries more profound, during her leisure time, Yanzi is always immersed in studying the history and culture of the ancient town. She often reads relevant books, delves into unique local cultures such as ancient local music, strolls through the streets and alleys of the town, and explores unknown corners.

She also frequently chats with the local senior citizens, listens to the cultural stories passed down from generation to generation, and tries hard to dig out unique perspectives, all just to bring something different and wonderful to netizens compared to other bloggers.

Yanzi has also faced some skepticism and concern from her relatives and friends. They doubt whether a lesser-known small town can offer her the broader sales channels and opportunities needed to achieve her dreams, especially in the current situation in which there is intense competition for attracting attention through cultural tourism.

However, Yanzi remains optimistic, believing in the town's potential. She has observed the local government's enthusiasm in promoting cultural tourism through live streaming on the Internet. With this momentum, she is confident that the town will attract greater attention in the future, and she sees more opportunities for growth in this small town than in the already saturated tourist hotspots.

Yanzi's efforts have not been in vain. Amid the rise of county celebrities and the tourism industry, she soon caught the attention of the local cultural and tourism department.

The department encouraged her to continue doing a good job in live-streaming and provided promotion support for her high-quality videos, hoping to quickly enhance the popularity of Heijing Ancient Town through this novel approach. They also look forward to exploring more cooperation spaces and methods with her.

Nowadays, Yanzi's small tea shop has become a unique fixture in the ancient town. It is like a warm rest stop, providing a place for tired tourists to take a break. It is also like a miniature Pu'er tea museum, with the fragrance of tea filling the air, attracting people to stop and stay, and feel that rare tranquility.

Here, Yanzi is not only a disseminator of Pu'er tea culture but also a narrator of the history of Heijing Ancient Town. In her own way, she makes more people understand the charm of this ancient town and chases her own youthful dreams.

Small towns, huge power

In China, county-level economies have demonstrated robust strength, along with rapid economic growth, steadily rising income levels, and increasingly improved infrastructure in third- and fourth-tier cities and counties.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, popular beverage brands such as Heytea, Starbucks, and M Stand, which traditionally expanded mainly in first- and second-tier cities, have been making quiet inroads into third- and fourth-tier cities and counties in recent years. Beyond coffee and bubble tea shops, counties are seeing an increasingly diverse array of brands in sectors such as catering, apparel, and hotels.

As of the end of 2022, China's urban population exceeded 920 million, with nearly 30 percent living across more than 1,800 counties and county-level cities nationwide. In other words, China's county-level consumer market now covers around 250 million people.

The strength of county economies continues to grow, with an increasing number of counties surpassing a GDP of 100 billion yuan ($13.8 billion). In 2024, the number of such "100-billion-yuan counties" reached 62 nationwide, an increase of 3 percent compared with the previous year, according to a report by China Newsweek, quoting CCID Consulting.
These counties contributed a total GDP of 10.5 trillion yuan ($1.45 trillion) in 2024, accounting for 7.8 percent of the national GDP while occupying only 1.3 percent of China's land area. Notably, more than 70 percent of these counties (45 in total) recorded a nominal growth rate exceeding the national average in the same period, according to the CCID statistics.

Industry experts believe that as the basic unit of China's national economy, county-level economies have been continuously expanding in recent years. The growing lineup of 100-billion-yuan counties has not only driven regional economic development, but also strengthened the role of the economy's "ballast" and "stabilizer."

For rural influencers like Wang and Yanzi, recording videos on a phone was once a simple gesture to share glimpses of their daily lives, yet unknowingly, they have become a vital force in the rising tide of rural revitalization.