Last year's net gains

A woman's routine

Yu Zhaohe, a 27-year-old male vlogger, has been tickling funny bones with clips he posted on Douyin. Yu portrays in vivid and humorous detail the everyday lives and challenges of young women in Guiyang, Guizhou province.

Yu usually dons an orange wig and garish dress to play a female persona, Maomaojie, in his video. Speaking Mandarin with the accent of Guiyang and using dramatic body language, he comically shows how women think and act when facing situations such as blind dating, shopping, dieting, meeting friends and breaking up with a boyfriend.

Yu used to observe people around him and dig out the funny parts of their daily behavior.

"I would crack up at the many trivial details in everyday life, especially when I went shopping with my mother or some female friends," says Yu.

In one video, Maomaojie is determined to buy an eyebrow pencil. Nothing more, nothing less. However, she actually brings back a bag full of makeup products, because of flattery from the salesmen and labels claiming "limited edition". Millions of online users could relate to it.

His ability to accurately capture the private emotions shared by women and use his sense of humor to carry out a performance interpretation of feminine experiences has made him one of the most popular cross-dressers on Douyin. By the end of 2019, subscribers to Yu's channel, titled Duoyu and Maomaojie, passed 33 million.

Yu, who once worked for a local newspaper in Guiyang, is now an online influencer, attending cultural and commercial events at home and abroad, and appearing at entertainment events with other big-name celebrities.