China's newest online sensation cooks elaborate dishes at work using office supplies
China’s latest online star uses everyday office equipment to cook pancakes, hot pot and even flame-grilled fish at her desk.
The 23-year-old, who goes by the name of “Ms Yeah”, began uploading her quirky cooking videos to Weibo, China’s microblogging service, in January.
She found new fans outside her home country when she posted videos on YouTube, which is blocked in mainland China.
Ms Yeah works in an ad agency, and would cook in office even before she began filming herself.
While she mostly cooks simple everyday Chinese dishes, it is the method she uses to cook them that intrigues viewers. She will take a steam iron and steam buns on it, or make an egg beater out of a plastic bottle.
She makes unique and unexpected alternatives to traditional cookware from scratch which appeals to the audience.
Although sometimes she does start fires in her office.
“I think I spend all of my spare time watching her videos,” Kenny Dilian, a fan from Indonesia, said during a YouTube FanFest in Hong Kong.
In one video, Ms Yeah uses an iron to grill strips of beef on her desk. In another, she cooks hot pot inside a water dispenser.
Dilian said his favourite video shows her dismantling a computer processing unit and using the metal shell with a candle inside to cook a Chinese pancake.
“She always has something new in the video. Sometimes it makes he laugh so hard,” he said.
Dilian was among a group of hardcore fans who lined up to meet Ms. Yeah at the FanFest, where she performed a live show.
Aside from finding creative ways to cook using office equipment, Ms Yeah also insists the videos have no narration.
“Everyone watches the video in silence, so foodies from all over the world can understand what we are doing,” she said.
Ms. Yeah's inbox is flooded with commercial requests but she’s not interested in them right now even though being an Internet celebrity is a big business in China.
Businesses generated by internet celebrity, including revenues from viewership, advertising and sales of relevant products, raked in an 58 billion yuan (about $8.5 billion) in 2016, more than China’s box office in 2015, according to CBN Data, a Chinese commercial data company.
