Directing their video careers

Visual feast

When Jiang Xuan, 41, also known as Jiang Laodao online, started to create food videos in 2013, the short-video platform Douyin had not been established and Bilibili was barely known. The short-video streaming and sharing sector was in its infancy.

The major video-sharing platform was Tudou, where Jiang launched the first episode of Cat's Kitchen, a series of food video clips specializing in Chinese cuisine and traditional delicacies, which had more than 54 million subscribers across all platforms by the end of last year.

"Everyone is the director of their life" was the slogan of Tudou, as it aimed to stimulate the creative enthusiasm of individuals and startups, says Jiang. "Cat's Kitchen has been established to deliver our thoughts about food to the younger generation."

It was not until 2015 that he began to promote videos of Cat's Kitchen on Bilibili, because Jiang used to regard the platform as a service provider that catered for a much younger audience that had little interest in cooking. However, once on the platform, the video series was very well received and enjoyed a boost to even greater levels of popularity.

"I started to think that our positioning had been inaccurate when our videos turned out to be very popular on Bilibili," says Jiang, who initially set his target demographic as college graduates who are just starting to live independently and getting married. "However, while many college students may not have fully entered society, they have very clear preferences and attitudes toward life, and cooking is an important element of that," Jiang explains.

The team was one of the top 100 Bilibili content creators in 2018. As of early November, the official account for Cat's Kitchen on the platform had uploaded 459 video episodes, and currently boasts over 6.29 million followers.

Since 2015, Jiang has also posted videos on YouTube. "Although we don't think YouTube will bring us many business prospects, we are very keen for people in other countries to see our content and what we are trying to express and convey," Jiang explains.

He adds that he receives emails from many other users in other countries to interact with him about the dishes featured. Some even invited him to visit in person and cook with them after the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of that, he says, he feels "a sense of presence among many foreign friends when sharing videos on the platform".