Stand-up comedy is back. Over a year after the “insulting the military” controversy that halted many stand-up activities, two stand-up-centric reality TV shows, the Stand-up Comedy (脱口秀和TA的朋友们) and King of Comedy (喜剧之王单口季) are now streaming. Li Dan, a hugely popular stand-up comedian in China, has been assuming a low profile since last year and does not appear on either.
Li has, in fact, been livestreaming on Xiaohongshu (RED) for his “general store” channel that mostly sells snacks. For the livestream, he would answer questions or respond to stories submitted by viewers about love, work or life in general, similar to being a radio host. The show is mostly marketed towards women, as they are the largest demographic on the platform. 88.7% of viewers on Li’s channel are women, 40% are from tier 1 cities and 35% are from new tier 1 cities. His comedic yet sincere answers have attracted many viewers to buy snacks from the channel as a form of “ticket to stand-up shows”.
On 22 August, Li Dan’s “general store” channel invited two other comedians Xu Zhishegn and Hulan as guests. The session garnered over 900,000 views with peak concurrent views of over 37,600. This is higher than Dong Jie, the number 1 streamer on RED’s previous stream, which had 19,300 concurrent viewers. Li Dan’s 7 streams in the past month brought in an average of 600,000 views each and sold over 500,000 RMB each session. The channel also frequents the “buyer ranking” list on RED, with its followers growing from 1.26 million on 9 August to 1.45 million on 22 August.
On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the topic “Li Dan livestream” (#李诞直播#) made it to the Hot Search list at number 50 with an accumulated 52.11 million views, while the newer hashtag “Stand-up Comedy without Li Dan” (#没有李诞的脱口秀#) reached number 34 with 1.96 million views.
Li Dan is no stranger to livestreaming as he streamed on Douyin in 2020 and Taobao in 2022. However, this time, his communication style is compared by some to early Dong Yuhui, with earnest discussion and less sales talk. Indeed, the channel doesn’t really have any price advantage. Viewers-turned-customers are mostly paying because of the “emotional value” provided by Li’s performance. The value adheres to the “intangible value” that RED is trying to provide as its USP against other e-commerce platforms that have price advantages. As the “buyer e-commerce” develops, it begins to rely on streamers’ personal brands again, looking very similar to the “super streamers” of the past, only with established celebrities.
