Chapter 169

If others are trying to imitate them, it means their account’s operation model has truly been recognized by the market.

After all, in an era where traffic is king, traffic equals real money.

If people are willing to spend time dissecting, studying, and copying the style of your livestream room, what does that say?

It says they’ve stumbled upon a brand-new livestream e-commerce model!

Fang Cheng was practically on the verge of a breakdown.

Because the task Wei Sheng had given him was to build a short video matrix centered around Sanchaling Village and to deeply explore a model for incubating niche accounts. In simple terms, Wei Sheng had no intention of copying the mainstream e-commerce models or fighting others for a slice of the pie. He wanted to bake a whole new pie of his own.

And now, the good news was, they really had baked that pie.

The bad news? Others had their eyes on it too…

“So what? Let them copy if they want to! Back in the ’90s, wasn’t the screen flooded with martial arts and romance dramas? But in the end, only a few became timeless classics. Don’t focus on what others are doing. Just refine your own account, make it better. If they’re chasing you, then run faster so they can’t catch up,” Wei Sheng lectured him.

The boss had set the direction. What could the employees do? Of course, they had to follow the lead and charge forward.

So, Fang Cheng and his team simply rooted themselves in Sanchaling.

Now, their once-weekly e-commerce training sessions had completely shifted from being their main focus to a side gig. Instead, the exploration and monetization of Langshan culture had become their core mission.

And the local government couldn’t be happier!

In the past, when people talked about Langshan or the Sanchaling area, the first impression was always “a poor, remote place full of unruly folk.” But now, with the booming online sales of Sanchaling’s high-mountain mist tea, handmade silver jewelry, glutinous rice wine¹, and camellia oil², the region had unexpectedly become a rising star on the internet—a hub for intangible cultural heritage and a hot spot for niche tourism!

Say what you will, but nowadays, even local governments are paying close attention to big data. In just a few months, Sanchaling’s online search volume skyrocketed like a rocket, soaring up the rankings of major tourist destination lists. How could the local officials not be thrilled?

Dear streamers, please keep broadcasting! And while you’re at it, help boost our township’s tourism industry too!

Thanks to this relationship, Fang Cheng’s team had basically become VIPs in the surrounding towns and villages. They were welcomed everywhere, practically fought over by local officials. Every township wanted Fang Cheng to bring his team over to see if they could uncover some local cultural gems to showcase in their livestreams. If something went viral, their township would rise to fame along with it!

Just think about Maotai Town. Back in the day, it was just a place that made liquor. But because it produced the world-famous Maotai liquor³, the entire town took off. Rumor has it that its annual output value now exceeds a hundred billion yuan!

Of course, they didn’t dare dream of comparing themselves to the legendary Maotai Town. But even if they couldn’t hit a hundred billion, a few billion or even a few hundred million would be amazing!

Although it wasn’t easy to dig up intangible cultural heritage, and even harder to turn it into a viable product, Fang Cheng was no longer the rigid thinker he used to be. After being thoroughly brainwashed by his boss, he began shifting his mindset and focused on building more distinctive personal brands.

He had the livestream rooms moved to the rural markets!

This approach wasn’t exactly new—others had done it before. But most agricultural streamers just took their fans on tours of their hometown markets. No one else did it like the professional vendors signed by Wei Sheng’s company, who braved wind and rain to follow Langshan’s local customs, traveling from town to town to set up stalls.

The first batch of “online mobile vendors” Fang Cheng recruited from the training classes each had their own unique charm.

There was one who came from a family that had made tofu for generations. In addition to selling tofu at the market, he now livestreamed sales of fermented tofu, stinky tofu, tofu skin, and dried bean curd.

There was a blacksmith who had learned to forge iron pots. He had nearly been driven out of business by cheap pots on Pinduoduo⁴, but thanks to his pure hand-casting skills, he found a second life through livestreaming.

There were also people who did rattan weaving, fishermen who rowed boats, small workshop owners making authentic sweet potato noodles, and families with ancestral rice wine recipes. Under the team’s guidance, it was as if they had moved their everyday lives online. Viewers who followed these accounts watched them like a serialized drama, seeing these ordinary villagers rise at dawn and rest at dusk, always either at their stalls or on the road to one.

As for the livestream sales?

Sorry, still the same familiar style. The streamer sets up the phone, goes about their business, and the viewers in the livestream room are kindly asked to place orders themselves. For product questions, please leave a comment…

This time, what Fang Cheng’s team created wasn’t a socially awkward persona, but a completely lifestyle-based personal brand. No scripts, no sob stories—just straightforward videos showing the daily lives of Sanchaling’s villagers.

Here, fans could see a day in the life of a rural artisan, feel the hardship and occasional joy of their lives, watch them worry about their children’s education, and see couples working hard to earn a little extra—setting up stalls by day, packing and shipping orders by night. Most of the products sold in these livestreams weren’t outsourced or mass-produced. They were made and packaged by the villagers themselves.

Put it this way: anyone who’s tried Sanchaling’s chili powder or sweet potato noodles has basically become a die-hard fan, constantly coming back for more.

Especially the chili powder. It might look ordinary, but once you taste it, you’ll know—it’s definitely made from authentic, open-field mountain-grown chili peppers. Fragrant and spicy! Perfect for making chili oil, mixing with noodles or rice, or seasoning cold dishes. Absolutely delicious.

And the sweet potato noodles—no weird additives or high-tech tricks, just pure sweet potato. Sure, the price is a bit higher than what other livestreams offer, but the repeat customers are through the roof! These days, it’s not easy to find truly authentic farm products.

Most importantly, under Fang Cheng’s team’s strict quality control, these lifestyle streamers were absolutely forbidden from pulling any bait-and-switch tactics. The company set clear rules: either sell your own farm products or sell items selected by the company. No private brand deals allowed.

This wasn’t because Wei Sheng wanted to monopolize profits or exploit his streamers.

The main issue was that the livestream e-commerce industry was a minefield. Even their professional product selection team had been scammed more than once—apology letters had been issued countless times. So how could they trust self-media accounts with zero experience in vetting products?

These short video accounts were hard-won successes. No exaggeration—any account in the Sanchaling area that had been incubated by Wei Sheng’s team and reached tens of thousands of followers was now earning more in a month than their entire family used to make in half a year.

But self-media accounts had a fatal weakness: one bad product could destroy their entire reputation. One misstep, and the whole account could crash and burn.

That’s why Wei Sheng made sure the training sessions drilled this into the villagers’ heads over and over again—so they’d understand just how devastating a bad product could be. It was all to prevent someone from falling for a shady manufacturer’s bait just to make a quick buck.

Centralized product selection had another benefit: when all the company’s accounts promoted the same brand, sales volume went up, which gave them more leverage in negotiations with the brand.

To put it bluntly, if Wei Sheng’s company became the biggest online distributor for a certain brand, they wouldn’t just get better pricing and higher profit margins—they could even influence product quality and design.

If consumers are demanding changes and you refuse? Fine. We’ll buy a production line ourselves and launch our own brand.

Wei Sheng never wanted to dominate the entire market. What he always aimed for was win-win cooperation. Only when everyone in the supply chain makes money can the whole industry be truly beneficial to society.

But for those stubborn, incorrigible brand owners, sometimes you have to make an example.

Like the time they partnered with a tea factory near Sanchaling. When sales of high-mountain mist tea started booming, the factory owner got greedy. He secretly brought in a batch of regular green tea from outside and tried to pass it off as high-mountain tea. The fraud was so blatant that consumers reported it to the platform. The owner still tried to argue, claiming that tea from different seasons naturally varied in flavor and color.

It wasn’t until Wei Sheng’s team sent both the retained samples and the counterfeit products for testing that the factory owner finally tried to play it down, smiling and promising never to do it again, hoping to sweep it under the rug.

He thought he had the upper hand—after all, his was the only tea factory nearby, and the local tea farmers were used to selling their mountain-picked leaves to him. He figured Wei Sheng had no other options. But what he didn’t expect was that Wei Sheng didn’t even bother arguing.

You won’t compensate the consumers tenfold? Won’t pay the fine?

Fine. You’re done.

Wei Sheng went straight to the local government and, through an investment promotion initiative, established a new tea factory in the area. Leveraging his previous work in uncovering and promoting intangible cultural heritage, he successfully brought several of the region’s most respected tea masters into his factory.

Don’t assume these tea masters only know how to stir leaves over a fire. In the eyes of the tea farmers around Langshan, these masters carry serious weight. Wherever they go, the farmers follow.

Tea farmers aren’t fools. Bosses can come and go, but no matter who runs the factory, they all rely on these masters.

Following the tea masters means their fresh tea leaves will sell without worry. The farmers understand this better than anyone.

The original factory owner thought that being a local gave him the upper hand, that he could gang up with others to bully Wei Sheng, the outsider. What he didn’t realize was that Wei Sheng, sharp as a tack, had already seized control of his lifeline.

Sure, the tea masters were locals. But precisely because of their deep love for their hometown and their craft, the last thing they wanted to see was someone passing off fake high-mountain green tea as the region’s authentic Yunwu tea⁵.

Think about it. You spend hours sweating over a charcoal fire, carefully hand-frying just a few pounds of premium tea. Then you turn around, and the boss dumps in a hundred pounds of cheap, mass-produced junk from outside, mixes it all together, and sells it as handcrafted high-mountain Yunwu tea…

When customers take that adulterated tea home and taste it—bam! Their first thought? So this is the so-called master who’s been frying tea his whole life? What a joke.

The masters’ reputations take a hit, and let me tell you, they were far angrier than Wei Sheng ever was.

If you want to ruin your own brand by selling fakes, that’s your business. But dragging our names down with you? Absolutely not. After all, Wei Sheng’s team had built a cultural brand around this—purely hand-fried, high-mountain, eco-grown Yunwu tea. Because of the premium pricing, every tin of tea came labeled with the name of the master who fried it. If a fan ends up with a fake, they might not be able to find the boss, but they can definitely see the tea master’s name.

No one wants to be cursed out by name. These masters have professional pride too, you know?

And so, aside from a few who were relatives of the original boss and felt awkward quitting right away, nearly all the tea masters in Sanchaling jumped ship to join Wei Sheng’s new factory.

With the masters gone, the farmers followed. The local tea factory, which had once had the potential to grow and thrive, ended up digging its own grave.

(End of Chapter)

Translator’s Notes