A live streamer from rural China has become the beating heart of his home village, and atrracted a massive online following, by wearing high heels to make fun videos which challenge traditional stereotypes. -- Photo: SCMP composite/Douyin
BEIJING (SCMP): A young live streamer in China has attracted 800,000 followers on a major social media platform by wearing high heels and strutting his stuff like a runway model to sell oranges in his village.
The money he has raised from his eye-catching online videos helps pay for his mother’s cancer treatment.
Since 2022, Cheng Zhongkun, 25, who uses the online handle @mingmokun, which means “supermodel kun”, has been posting videos of himself in high heels having fun with fellow villagers in his hometown of Qingji in southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality.
Cheng, who graduated as a dancing major from Chengdu Sport University in southwestern Sichuan province, is not afraid to show off his feminine side in the videos.
His father went to the city for work when Cheng was two years old, leaving his mother to take care of the daily farm work.
As a result, Cheng had to grow up fast.
Cheng Zhongkun’s high-heeled escapades have captured the imagination of his fellow villagers, and hundreds of thousands of people on social media. -- Photo: CCTV
By the age of six he had learned to look after himself, and each weekday he walked two hours to school and back.
He said his schoolmates bullied him because he liked playing with girls, and was the only boy who signed up for school dancing classes.
Cheng said he the elderly people in his village helped him by respecting his his style and admiring his beauty.
“The Qingji villagers never judged me, they only praised me. The made me comfortable about being myself,” he said.
After graduating in 2022, Cheng worked as a luxury sales assistant in the fashion capital of Chengdu. He later returned to the village to look after his mother, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
His parents, who often appear in the videos he posts, have been widely praised by online observers for their open-mindedness.
Cheng’s live streaming videos are fun-packed and have been embraced by young and old alike in his home village. -- Photo: CCTV
Cheng’s mother said she had no issue with her son wearing high heels, and his father even said he liked wearing the footwear more than his son.
During one live stream, Cheng senior also said that besides his daughter he considers he has two more children because his son is “both a boy and a girl”.
Both father and son describe Cheng’s mother as the “most manly person in the family”.
Some people have described the village where everyone can be themselves as a utopia, adding that the younger Cheng’s choices do not make him “less of a man”.
He has returned the villagers’ love by bringing them modern entertainment.
Among the things he has done to bring joy to the villagers is to hold a weekly “team bonding” event.
Cheng also set up a temporary nightclub and invited villagers to dance wildly. In addition, he organised a Mother’s Day for the women who were left behind in the village to look after kids or elderly people.
His best friend in the village is 73-year-old Chen Changmei. She said her children who work in the city enjoy Cheng’s videos because can they see their mother is so happy.
His high heeled appearances also promote the sale of oranges grown in the village, both online and at the market, helping improve the quality of life for its inhabitants.
“He is a true demonstration of the saying ‘people throw mud at me but I grow flowers in that mud’,” said one villager. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
