Is Anything on the Chinese Internet and Live Streaming Real?

Hey there! Today we’re diving into something absolutely crazy – the world of Chinese internet entertainment and scams. Trust me, you won’t believe what you’re about to see.

David Zhang Download Subtitle

Part 1: The Entertainment Mayhem

The Knockoff K-Pop Groups

So, in a world full of fake videos and scam live streams, we’ve got some pretty wild entertainment happening on the Chinese internet.

You know G-Dragon and Big Bang, right? Well, China has their own version – except it’s like the rural village knockoff. The copycat version. In China, it’s called the “Shanzhai” – the village version knockoff of Korean K-pop groups.

But trust me, that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

The Donation-Driven Madness

These live streams are pretty tame at first. The idea is simple: entertain people, get donations. But then it gets a little bit crazier…

The Guy Who Never Rests:

This poor dude basically just consistently gets donations, so he never gets a chance to actually rest. Every time he tries to speak – BOOM – another donation, and he has to react again!

This is a step up from regular streams. Why? Because it’s donation-driven reactions!

You know those NPC live streams on TikTok? This one’s slightly different because he’s SO popular. One of his selling points is his fake wig that flips over when his assistants drag him down and he falls on the floor.

Obviously, the entertainment value is very high, and it’s something interesting. You know, at the end of the day, it IS entertainment… just in live stream format.

The Dancing Guys:

Then you have these guys doing a similar thing where they dance whenever they get a donation.

One guy tries to eat, but he can’t! Every time he’s about to take a bite – DONATION – and he has to dance again!

It’s pretty crazy, but again, it’s one of those things where, you know, it doesn’t hurt nobody.

Part 2: When Things Get Sketchy – The Fruit Scams

The Too-Good-to-Be-True Fruit Sellers

Then you come across THESE videos, which start to get into the scam category.

Notice how beautiful these mangoes are? They’re:

Big ✓
Ripe ✓
Juicy ✓

You’ve got pineapples, apples, any kind of fruit that you can think of!

You have these “amazing” sellers in China who are:

Super nice
Super friendly on camera
Selling what looks like sweet fruit heaven

Whether it’s yams, root vegetables, or any other produce – there’s a lot of these videos.

The Big Question: Are they real?

That’s what we really want to get to today!

Sometimes they’re even live-streamed showing you:

How juicy those lychees are
How big those mangoes are
How perfect everything looks

No matter what you do, these are just really addicting to watch. I’m sure you guys have come across these on Instagram, right? Wherever the algorithm takes you!

One caption says: “AI cannot compete when humans get crazy.”

And it’s always that background music that gets me! 😅

Part 3: Why Are They Acting Like This?

The Hyper-Competitive Chinese Internet

Now you see all those crazy videos. You might be wondering: Why are they acting out like that?

Is it that people love this kind of crazy-induced entertainment?

Well, the truth is: Unless you’re one-up on the other person’s craziness, there’s no way people are going to watch you.

Why? Because the Chinese entertainment industry is VERY competitive.

It’s gotten to the point where the only ways for you to be at the top are:

Option 1: You’re really good at something (like a video game)

Option 2: You get quite crazy with what you do and gain a lot of viewers that way

The “Internal Circulation” Problem

There’s a term in Chinese for this hyper-competitive environment. It’s called “内卷” (Nèijuǎn) – or “internal circulation.”

What does it mean?

Essentially, it means that if you think you’re doing really well, the guy next to you:

Has a better resume
Has more talents
Does things better
Is even MORE willing to sacrifice his dignity to achieve things

And then you have somebody who’s even one-up higher than THAT guy!

You create this situation where everybody’s kind of spinning in circles trying to one-up each other.

This is the level it takes just to attract viewers!

Part 4: The Dark Side of Live Streaming

The Dancing “Torture”

Now, this lady here – her entire thing is about how the United States is about to be destroyed or it’s collapsing. “America is doomed!” Every. Single. Video.

If you think these are just some fringe live streamers or creators, well, this is just one bit of the Chinese internet, I guess you would call it.

But then the internal circulation gets SO bad, this type of stuff happens:

She’s literally made to dance repeatedly because somebody keeps donating or gifting!

Look at her:

She’s sweating
She’s dancing the same thing over and over
The same kind of dance
ZERO breaks

Every time the music goes up, she has to dance.

This is like another form of torture, I swear! This is what people with money are doing, right? Why would you torture her like that?

The same thing keeps happening – people forcing her to dance repeatedly. She just has to keep doing the exact same moves. There’s no stop to this. It’s crazy!

And then every time she looks at her colleague on the side, she’s like:

“Why am I doing this? This is just torture.”

Look, she’s sweating. They just look at each other like, “What’s going on, man?”

How Live Streamers Make Money

Well, that’s how you earn money as a live streamer! You basically have these dance chatrooms where you get interaction with that live streamer through donations, and that donation turns into a dance.

The Fake CEO Guy:

This guy’s back! He pretends to be a boss/CEO, and then they do little segments where:

He gets pulled
They have to dance
There’s no way he gets to eat a single bite from his plate (I swear!)

And there are obviously different prizes to each of these gifts and different dances.

The Car Sales Girl:

There’s some streams where you’re trying to sell a car, and then the girl is doing full basketball moves! You know, she’s got to appeal to all those car buyers (who are mostly male).

The Elaborate Costumes:

You’ve got:

Sun Wukong (Monkey King) costumes
People pretending like they’re in the heavenly courts
Nezha characters
All sorts of elaborate setups

This is the extent that they go to in order to please the audience so they can make money!

Part 5: The E-Commerce Scams

What You Just Saw vs. What’s Coming

What you just saw were live streams for entertainment purposes.

But what you’re seeing NOW has to do with actual scams on the e-commerce market through live streaming.

The Rotating Orange Belt Scam

You have these live streams where:

1,400+ people are watching
There’s a whole belt of streamlined boxes of oranges being sold
The person is tagging each box as it “sells”

What they’re trying to create: This sense that every person buying it gets their box tagged and sold.

What’s actually happening: If you watch long enough, you realize it’s actually a rotating belt that comes back with the same box of oranges! Somebody off-screen is simply removing that tag, so it looks like they’re selling fresh boxes of oranges.

The Fake Underwater Fishing Scams

The “Deep Ocean” Stream:

You have people pretending like they’re live streaming underwater when in reality it’s literally a shallow stream somewhere that they found.

Without context, you would actually think they’re somewhere deep inside the ocean, but it’s just a little stream of water!

The Octopus Catch:

Same thing with these live streams where you see them trying to catch an octopus somewhere near a beach or cave or rock near the ocean.

But listen to the background! Do you hear it?

You hear the stream of water from a source that’s NOT the ocean, because the ocean makes waves, right? You hear a back-and-forth wave sound.

But that was the sound of water streaming – which means this is probably filmed in a pool somewhere!

They get famous as somebody who does these cool “day in the life of a fisherman” type jobs.

The River Fishing Scam:

You have somebody fishing in this rapid stream. What they actually do is hook up a fish that’s already dead.

Look at the fish in his net – it’s already lost its fins, and it’s a dead fish already! Yet they’re still pretending like this is a real fish they just caught.

The fish is literally dead. They probably bought it from some fish market and just packaged it as if this is a real fish they just got.

Anyone who’s done fishing knows that you don’t suddenly get a big fish within 30 seconds. Sometimes you have to wait a VERY long time for that to happen!

Part 6: The Fruit Scam Network

The Conveyor Belt Deception

This is exactly what happens with those fruits, right?

You see boxes of them being shipped in and out. But they’re on wheels! They basically get “sold out” as if it’s constantly boxes of products being sold, but it’s really not.

You can’t really trust those videos on the internet when they’re selling fruits or certain products because the chance of that being real is very low.

The Factory Floor View

Here’s a bird’s-eye view shot from the “factory.”

There are a LOT of people working on this deliberate scam. They’re literally making it seem like this is a huge operation of fruit selling (which it is), but at the end of the day, it’s actually a big operation of fruit scamming.

You wouldn’t know much about this unless you were really invested in buying certain things.

The Big Question: Can you really trust anything being sold on Chinese websites if that’s what you’re getting?

Part 7: The Taklamakan Desert Mega-Scam

The Sweet Potato “Miracle”

These people take it to the next level with what everybody in China knows now as the Taklamakan Desert Scam.

Here’s how it works:

You have these people who go to the far desert in the Xinjiang region. It’s called the Taklamakan Desert.

They claim that they’ve cultivated enough arable land there from desert sand to be able to grow things like:

HUGE sweet potatoes
Giant grapes
Massive walnuts

This would require some really nutritious soil to do, right? But you’re seeing it right before your eyes in this girl’s video!

She’s selling these giant sweet potatoes that she “grew” right in the desert area of Taklamakan.

The Props Operation

There are people in the background, and all of these fields look like a huge project.

What they ACTUALLY do for the scam:

They plant these potatoes and sweet potatoes ahead of time. They create this illusion that these are natural or actually farmed.

But in reality? They’re just props!

They brought these sweet potatoes from somewhere else, and that’s what they use them for – as props!

Similar scams from other countries:

We know similar things have happened in other countries. For example, those “built a shed from mud” or “built a shed with a crazy swimming pool” projects in Vietnam.

What they do is actually use power tools or excavators to dig a hole, but obviously you don’t see it on camera.

This is pretty much the same thing!

They want you to buy these sweet potatoes. They want you to feel like you’re getting a farm-to-table type product, but it’s really not real.

Part 8: The Taklamakan Becomes a Meme

Everybody’s in Taklamakan!

That’s not the only thing, because Taklamakan Desert became this huge meme!

But it’s also because everybody is apparently repeating the exact same story.

Any video I show you, they’re always in Taklamakan!

Girl #1: The Flame Mountains

This girl in Taklamakan says she’s in the hottest place – an area called the Flame Mountains (Huoyan Shan), which gets to about 40-50°C according to her.

She talks about how she’s selling this miserable story that they’ve lived here for 20 years. All this blah blah blah fake made-up sob story, essentially.

Then they have this guy who looks clueless, like “Do I even know this lady?”

But they pretend to be father and daughter. They’re “farmers” here.

They do this really weird backwards walking while showing you the greenery stuff. All of this is a prop location, by the way!

All these dug-in holes and stuff? They’re all fake!

Then they try to sell you their grapes turned into raisins. How you should buy it from them because:

You’re supporting the farmers ✓
You’re supporting the locals ✓
You’re supporting this great China story ✓

Girl #2: Same Script, Different Person

Then there’s another girl who basically does the exact same action – showing you that mountain we just saw!

From here, she goes on to show you the exact same pit she came down into. That other girl was just shoveling dirt from this pit, and now SHE’S doing it!

So is she like the sister of the other girl? Who knows?

And the same little channel, the same stream where she got water from… she goes into the grape vineyards, right?

You’ve got to show the same grapes! So she’s got all the grapes that she’s “grown” here. Look at that! Crazy!

Then they go into that same hut where they’ve got those raisins ready to sell to you:

Farm to table ✓
Local organic ✓
Best farming in Xinjiang ✓
Whatever Chinese story ✓

Look at the size of those raisins!

Girl #3: Camera Flip Edition

That’s two girls. And then we have this girl here who did it on the other side!

I don’t know how – maybe she flipped the camera or something – but it’s the exact same thing!

Even the script is the same, by the way!

Oh yeah, this was the girl before. I think they’re just showing you different girls doing the exact same thing. Going to the same few little places, showing you the same thing, trying to sell you this raisin.

It has become this mystified joke of a place!

The Meme Videos

You’ve got these people now doing like four people in a row falling down in the desert! Pretty funny!

I think these people are memeing this, but it could be real. Who knows? Maybe they’re actually involved in the scam!

Part 9: The Victory Channel Walnut Scam

Sweet Potatoes, Grapes, and NOW Walnuts!

So you’ve grown:

Sweet potatoes ✓
Grapes ✓
Walnuts ✓

All in the desert!

The River Channel Setup

They focus on the river streams. They send people into this channel with a flowing river, and then they say “Oh, this is a victory channel!”

Then they tell you about how in this victory channel, they’ve managed to save an entire crop region using that water.

And look! All of the great walnut production happening near this “victory channel”!

The Target Audience:

These scams target 50-year-old uncles or aunts from China who have no idea about online scams.

Multiple Variations, Same Scam

There are different variations of this, but they all involve:

How this is part of the Taklamakan Desert
This is where they have this massive channel (the exact same one)
All of their walnuts, farm-to-table, whatever
“Look how beautiful they are!”

I bet it’s the exact same basket used as props! Every time they just crack one or two open, and they’ve got plenty of ingredients for all of their videos.

The Scam Network

There are different versions of this, right? You’ve got like a whole scam network going on:

People who do the grapes
People who do the walnuts
People who do sweet potatoes

It’s organized!

Part 10: The Reality Check – What You Actually Get

Testing the Raisin Scam

Okay, so people actually bought this because they wanted to see whether or not this is a real thing.

What they claimed:
Huge, huge raisins!

What you actually get:

There are certain huge ones like advertised, and then the rest are just regular-sized ones.

The Weight Scam:

Here you see the bag, right? It’s weighing 495 grams.

But when you take out the preservative packet (or the thing to keep it dry), that alone weighs 219 grams!

So you’re only getting 200 grams worth of raisins for the price of almost 500 grams!

The Same Script, Different Actors

But it’s like they even get different people to do the exact same script!

Everybody seems to have memorized this particular script. They just go out and show you all of the stuff.

I kind of love these because every time I watch them, there’s different people!

Some of them you’ll notice have the same person but in different outfits. This guy has been in multiple different videos now doing the exact same thing – showing you the walnuts with different people though!

Part 11: The Mango Farmer Sob Story

The “Struggling Farmer” Narrative

So when you see those fruit sellers selling all those beautiful mangoes and whatever fruits, and you think “Wow, that’s crazy that they’re growing this,” here’s what’s really happening…

You have these videos where they tell you a soft story. This is in the heart of southern China where they grow these massive mangoes.

The Story:

“Look at this farmer. He’s working SO hard to grow these massive mangoes, but they’re not getting sold to people!”

So you have videos like this where it’s a call to action for you guys to:

Come and support local farmers
Buy their mangoes
Look at the size of these!
They’re going to go to waste!

“Why not donate some money for the good cause of supporting the farmers?”

The “Charitable Organization” Trick

What they do is these guys filming the farmer pretend to be like goodwill charitable organizations that help farmers by:

Buying their products at a much lower price
Getting rid of them rather than letting them go to waste
Then reselling them

The Farmer’s “Sacrifice”:

These “farmers” (who are also actors) will say:

“Oh, you know, we’ll eat the smaller ones. The bigger ones you guys should take home, and we’ll even give you guys a duck as a gift! Take the duck and eat it too!”

They’re all in these really muddy, dirty outfits with:

Holes in their clothes
Pants that aren’t really clean
Scabs on their body
All of these things to make them look miserable

They’re selling this idea that they’re really struggling.

The Big Reveal

As it turns out: These videos – whether showing the countryside of China or all of these fruits and veggies – turns out they’re all fake and these are all actors!

They’re simply selling this idea of struggle, selling this idea of tragedy for you to buy into it.

Part 12: The Beijing Tourist Guide Scam

A New Type of Scam

What I want to show you next is what happens when you’ve got people who maybe know something about the scams, know something about internet culture. They won’t fall for these fruit scams because to them, it’s too fake, too easy.

So what’s the new approach?

How about using pretty girls to attract maybe even foreigners who want to come visit China? Or just painting a China that is perfect and something that people are like, “Whoa, I want to go see that!”

This new type of scam is called Beijing Tourist Guides or Beijing Tour Guides.

The “Perfect Tour Guide”

I’ll show you these videos. Basically, she claims:

She’s born in 1999 (young and attractive)
She’s in Beijing
She does personalized tour guides for couples or families to come to Beijing and travel

What she promises:

She shows you all of the places that you’ll be taken to by her personal vehicle:

Take you to places
You don’t need to spend money on transportation
Go to the Great Wall of China
Eat all the best food

She knows all the spots – local guide!

What you supposedly get:

A beautiful tour guide ✓
Visit all the best travel locations ✓
See all the best things ✓
Eat all the best food ✓

Multiple Versions, Same Footage

You have different versions of this, right?

Today they make up the story that they’re meeting “this guy” or “that family” or whatever. Then you know, they get a tour in Beijing and show you all the places you could go:

Flag raising ceremony
Forbidden City
Palace gardens
All of these things

But here’s the problem:

It’s the exact same girl, same footage, except she looks like she’s doing the exact same thing under a different name!

And now this time, that girl that you just saw with the same footage? She’s now a tour guide in Xinjiang!

Wait, what? If you’re a local guide for Beijing, how did you suddenly become a local guide in Xinjiang?

Part 13: The Smoking Gun Evidence

The Family of Three

And then there are some places where it’s SO obvious!

Example 1:

In this shot, you see a husband, wife, and child – a family of three. Got it?

Example 2:

Now it’s a “different girl,” apparently, right? She’s also born in 1999 (young girl). She’s also in Beijing.

The last one I just showed you was in Xinjiang.

And then… BOOM:

It’s the exact same family of three, but now this time they’re coming to Beijing!

So the same tour guide that somehow got the same footage from the family of three:

Going to an airport terminal
Going from the gate to the plane
Somehow wearing the exact same thing
Traveling to a different location

Now, how is that possible? Huh?

The Truth Revealed

Maybe the girl that you see in the beginning isn’t a real person, and they’re simply piecing and splicing footage together to make it seem like this is a legitimate “day in the life of a tour guide in China.”

They show you all kinds of things, right? They use the same footage:

The same areas
Some of them look a little bit different (like the flag raising)
They basically filmed the whole thing and just cut it into different promotion videos

You saw:

The people carrying the flag
Great Wall of China
The sizzling barbecue scene
All recycled footage!

More of the Same

Another girl. I mean, the same girl, the same footage. Another one of the same family of three, right?

Same family of three, but now she’s with a different girl… but the same girl…

You know, it’s getting so confusing. It’s like Inception, but not really!

You’ve got shots of pretty girls, slightly different girls, but the same ones as before. Showing you now this is in Xinjiang.

All of the stock footage that you can find in the world!

Conclusion: The Crazy World of Chinese Internet Scams

Alright, I hope you enjoyed today’s video! Hopefully some of these made you laugh and also made you realize how ridiculous it is!

Key Takeaways:

Entertainment Scams:

Donation-driven torture dancing
Fake CEO personas
Elaborate costume performances
All driven by hyper-competition

E-Commerce Scams:

Rotating conveyor belt fruit
Fake underwater fishing
Dead fish presented as fresh catches
Props disguised as real products

The Taklamakan Desert Network:

Fake farm-to-table stories
Same scripts, different actors
Recycled locations and props
Weight scams on delivered products

The Tourist Guide Scam:

Recycled footage
Fake personas
Same families in multiple videos
Stock footage presented as real tours

The Bigger Picture

The Chinese internet has become a place where:

Competition drives people to extreme measures
Scams are industrialized and systematic
The line between entertainment and exploitation is blurred
Technology is used to deceive rather than inform

Final Thoughts

If you enjoyed the content, let me know your thoughts in the comments and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already!

Remember: Not everything you see online is real, especially when it seems too good to be true!

As always, thank you so much for watching, and we’ll see you next time!

Bye-bye! 👋

Quick Reference Guide

Red Flags to Watch For:

🚩 Same locations in multiple “different” videos
🚩 Sob stories that seem too dramatic
🚩 Prices way below market value
🚩 “Limited time” pressure tactics
🚩 No verifiable business information
🚩 Recycled footage with different narrators
🚩 Too-perfect produce in “struggling” farms
🚩 Professional filming for “amateur” farmers

Stay smart, stay safe, and always verify before you buy!