Shougong Geng never left his village, but everyone watching him is a city person
His builds need space and the freedom to make a mess — only possible in the countryside; city people are the ones who find them unusual. Like musicians who sing about the poor, the people who actually buy in are city people, even intellectuals, and the ads he embeds reach an audience that is entirely urban.
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A village internet celebrity whose audience is entirely urban
Kuaishou has produced many rural internet celebrities, some with tens of millions of followers, but their audiences are mostly in the countryside, county towns or further down — big-city people can't get into them. Shougong Geng has never left his village in Baoding, yet his audience is mostly urban. His own explanation: making things requires a lot of space and the willingness to make a mess, and those things are only possible in the countryside; city people, by contrast, find it unusual. Luo Yonghao added an analogy: some original musicians who sing about the poor are loved precisely by city people, even intellectuals, while the poor themselves don't care. The result is that the ads embedded in his videos reach an audience that is entirely urban.
— Luo Yonghao, Shou Gong Geng‘Money I can't handle’ doesn't mean too much money
Shougong Geng has said he can't earn ‘money I can't handle’, which many fans read as ‘earning too much, can't handle it’. He clarified: it's not about the money, it's that his ability falls a bit short. Luo Yonghao pressed: you're best at making content, your traffic is still astonishing, you could earn several times more by taking more brand deals — why not? Shougong Geng repeatedly said his ability isn't up to it. Brands usually come with a creative idea; he doesn't think much of theirs, and he can't come up with one he's satisfied with himself, so he just doesn't do it, preferring to post less. Luo Yonghao had assumed he was lazy or free-spirited; after talking he found it was ‘no way to land on a creative idea that works for both sides’.
— Shou Gong Geng, Luo YonghaoMaking is time-bounded, coming up with ideas is not
Shougong Geng broke down his own production process: purely by time, making takes longer than thinking up ideas. But the key is that making is time-bounded while thinking up ideas is not. When a brand deal comes in, he'll spend three to five days, up to a month, on the idea; if he can't come up with one, he lets it go. Some ideas he's thought about for two years without cracking them; some take shape in a day. This explains why he posts so little — the bottleneck isn't production capacity, it's ideas. He discusses ideas with his older and younger brothers, but in the end most of the ideas are his, with others refining them. Now when he explains requirements to the team, they often don't understand; the requirements have gotten more complex than before.
— Shou Gong GengNo faking on camera, and it works in reality too
Luo Yonghao asked him to his face: in all these years of videos, you've never cheated in the filming, right? Shougong Geng said he's never cheated on camera; if there were any requirement, it's that the principle has to hold up in reality too. Maybe there isn't enough time, or enough spare parts, so it can't be as perfect as it should be, but basically it works. The pleasure of making things for him is that it really works, and then he films it — not filming something fake and being satisfied when everyone says it's good. This matches his understanding of ‘useful’: everything he wants to make is something that can actually be used and run in reality.
— Shou Gong Geng, Luo YonghaoFilming the upside-down hair wash, brother standing by with a sledgehammer
Luo Yonghao asked whether there had been accidents in the process. Shougong Geng said rarely, but once: making the goat horns required filling them with sand, baking them, then bending them slightly; while baking, the sand exploded and flew into his brother's eye, so they rushed to the hospital, and fortunately the doctor said it was nothing serious. For the upside-down hair wash, he didn't realize the danger at first — washing hair upside down seemed perfectly logical — and only when he actually tried it did he find it terrifying: as soon as the water covers your nose you panic, and then you have to adapt repeatedly to water over your mouth, then turn. During the shoot he had his brother stand beside him with a sledgehammer, ready to smash the tub if something went wrong; that acrylic tub is actually very hard to smash, but having someone there made him feel safe. Whether his hair would get tangled, he hadn't considered at all at the time.
— Shou Gong GengHe gives himself fifty percent luck
Luo Yonghao has asked many guests the same question: how much of success is chance? Shougong Geng said chance is a fairly big part. His father said it outright: if you hadn't caught short video, hadn't caught this internet era, with your personality you'd never have succeeded. Shougong Geng's own review: if he really hadn't caught it, he might have kept working as a laborer, or gone into farming or something else — ‘that outcome would be much worse than now’. He says both luck and effort are there, hard to tell which is bigger, but he gives himself ‘50% luck, 50% himself’. He doesn't believe he'd have made it in a different lane, with a different personality.
— Shou Gong GengHe dared to start a business because stainless steel doesn't depreciate
When he decided to go out on his own in '17, Shougong Geng's confidence came from a very practical judgment: stainless steel crafts keep for a long time, while the cost of human labor keeps rising, so if it doesn't sell now, it might sell later, and for more. It isn't a tech product, it doesn't depreciate that fast — unlike hoarding a pile of pagers you can't move. So the worst case is losing your own labor, and the stuff keeps without rusting. What he was thinking at the time was ‘at least there's no loss’, so it was worth a try. Even now he says he isn't very confident; his confidence back then only went as far as ‘worth a try’.
— Shou Gong GengA super IP nobody has picked up
Some netizens suggested Shougong Geng do a national tour, and have Baoding's culture and tourism bureau develop it into a theme park: two hours by car from Beijing, land isn't expensive, the works are all ready, just set them out and put up a shed, and ticket revenue would cover the upkeep. Shougong Geng said he'd never thought about that direction, and culture and tourism officials had never talked to him about it. Luo Yonghao said repeatedly what a shame, calling it a super IP. He also noted: these days computer CG and AI can make anything gorgeous, anything eerie, and after seeing enough eeriness in videos you stop finding it eerie — but walking through the workshop and touching each piece one by one, that's when it feels magical.
— Luo Yonghao, Shou Gong GengIn their own words · checked verbatim
He is a natural, unconscious modern artist who has never been polluted by modern art theory
他是一个天然的不自觉的 没被现代艺术理论污染过的现代艺术家
Luo Yonghao1:00
Back when I was selling things, I remember when I first started, sometimes people would ask me the price and I'd be too embarrassed to say how much
以前就是卖东西的时候 我记得开始做的时候 有时候问我价格 我就不好意思说多少钱
Shou Gong Geng30:17
There are some people making original music — this musician sings about the poor and the lowly, but the audience that really loves him is all urban, even leaning intellectual
有一些搞原创音乐的 这个音乐人唱的都是底层的小人物 但是真正喜欢他的受众 都是城里的 甚至是偏知识分子的
Luo Yonghao1:05:37
Maybe it's just that my ability isn't up to it — I always felt it was that my ability fell a bit short
可能就是自己能力不行 我一直以为感觉就是自己能力差一点
Shou Gong Geng2:14:06
But for me, it's half and half — 50% luck, 50% myself
但对于我来说 就是一半也对一半 50%靠运气 50%靠自己
Shou Gong Geng3:07:34
It's just, you know, a craft object or whatever — I think on this point, it's basically something with no loss, and it keeps without rusting
它只是一个 就是说工艺品 或者什么东西 我觉得这点 就是基本上没有损失的东西 留着也不生锈
Shou Gong Geng3:09:34
Figures
| Households in the village | about 1500 | 6:05 |
| Number from his middle-school class who got into high school | five or six to a dozen out of seventy or eighty | 9:06 |
| First job's daily wage and first month's income | 30 yuan a day, 2000 yuan the first month | 16:11 |
| Sales at a single event at Joy City | about 20,000-plus yuan | 1:36:49 |
| Per-unit cost of the treadmill project on TV | up to nearly 10,000 yuan | 2:20:09 |
| Upper limit on prop material costs | basically never more than 20,000 yuan | 2:20:09 |
Glossary
- MCN
- A company that signs internet celebrities and handles their business, production and promotion
- TIG welding
- A welding method that shields the arc with an inert gas, finer than traditional stick welding
How to listen
Creators doing content and building a personal IP, especially those with traffic but no way to monetize it; and investors looking at the commercialization of craftspeople and the short-video ecosystem.
The childhood, migrant labor and welding-school stretches can be fast-forwarded; starting from ‘money I can't handle’ is more useful.