On the 20th day in Hangzhou, Ren Hailong woke up in a 6-square-meter rental house, the time pointing to 10 o’clock. His pillow is placed next to two printed out “live with goods” notes, key words and phrases are circled by yellow marker.
Recently, Ren Hailong often sleep late and wake up late, he is not used to such a routine. A month ago, he was a polisher in Dalian shipyard, from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm, wearing heavy labor protection clothing, dust mask, face and hands covered with iron dust. Such a day, Ren Hailong lived for two years.
In two years, Ren Hailong has another identity: short video creator, his paragraph “if you can earn 300 yuan every day, I will take my aunt to travel” video in 2020 was forwarded by the media. Today, he has more than one million followers in ShakeYin.
Ren Hailong grew up in his aunt’s house, five years as a soldier, four years of work, he has been floating outside. Far away in Xinxiang, Henan Province, his aunt, who only uses an elderly machine, does not know how red Ren Hailong is, and does not know that he resigned to Hangzhou to learn to live with the goods.
Unlike Ren Hailong, who is working in the city, a year ago, Wang Xiaonan, a college student, returned to his hometown in Sli County, Anyang, Henan Province, picked up a cell phone, aimed at the front of the house, recording his life and that of his father.
The young people in the village have gone out to work, the old people gathered at the entrance of the village do not know what Wang Xiaonan is shooting, relatives at first know that she came home to do short video, think it is not reliable, urged Xiaonan’s father Wang Yunpo “do not let the child go astray”.
Wang Xiaonan is called Mai Xiaodeng on Jitterbug, which means “good harvest”. Today, she has more than three million followers.
Wang Xiaonan is skilled at live streaming and learning to make woodblock prints with her father.
In 2020, two young people who shoot short videos, both choose a different way to live. Or rather, they found a way to let the world know themselves again.
The neglected child
Ren Hailong’s father also works as a polisher in the Dalian shipyard. Ren Hailong was not going to say he resigned, but walking down the road bumped into it, “and said, I quit, to go to Hangzhou, and he didn’t say anything.”
Because of poor learning, Ren Hailong went to Dandong, Liaoning Province as an engineer at the age of 17. After his discharge, he saved up a sum of money to return home, bought a two-story second-hand house, can not always live in his aunt’s house.
When Ren Hailong was about to decorate, his best friend who grew up playing with him encountered difficulties and asked him to borrow money. From a hundred or two hundred, to thousands of tens of thousands, Ren Hailong also in their own name to help friends loans, lent out more than 100,000. “He has a wife, children, if the family knows that he owes so much money, the family will be scattered.” Out of trust in his brother, Ren Hailong helped in the end.
However, later the friend fell into gambling, broke faith insolvency, the burden fell on Ren Hailong, he had to work to pay back the money. 2018, after being introduced, he went to Dalian shipyard.
Grinding is not technically demanding, but the environment is harsh. Despite the protection, iron slag can splash into the eyes and cause inflammation. But Ren Hailong needs this job with “good” income, “almost 250 yuan a day, and get some more when working overtime.”
Ren Hailong previous video, he filmed the red eyes, their own medicine to stop the tears, the clothes off several times, or a puddle of muddy water, he also worried about the skin strangled by the mask can not recover, go home for New Year’s bad account. He said to himself, “Ren Hailong, you must never forget the suffering here.”
Ren Hailong often took cotton swabs himself to pick out the iron slag in his eyes.
As soon as Wang Xiaonan was born, her mother left home and never returned, and Wang Yunpo raised her by farming. Wang Yunpo was the second oldest at home, his siblings left the village one after another to live in the city, and he lived with his elderly mother, and his daughter in two old bungalows. Two years ago, his mother died and his daughter was in Zhengzhou, leaving Wang Yunpo alone.
In the year of the college entrance exam, Wang Xiaonan was in a car accident and took one less exam, and her final score was not good enough to get into a third grade school. When applying for a major, her family wanted her to study accounting, good employment, but she had her own ideas and hid from everyone and applied for journalism. She ran to Zhengzhou with 300 yuan in her pocket and worked part-time to earn tuition.
From high school to college, Wang Xiaonan was the most inconspicuous child in her class and at home. The children of her aunt and uncle’s family, all with good grades, went to Peking University and Fudan. Neighbor Wang Xiaoqin did not know the girl born in ’95 before she brushed up on the video of Mai Xiaodeng on Shake, she only knew that the Wang family had a single father who was living with his daughter.
After graduating in 2017, her classmates found jobs one after another, Wang Xiaonan was still wandering, she felt a bit capricious, was it the wrong choice at the beginning?
Later, the news of her father’s illness came. After arriving in Zhengzhou for treatment, Wang Yunpo had one kidney removed and was unable to do heavy work and needed to be taken care of. Wang Xiaonan didn’t have time to plan for the future, but spent more time with her father.
Open a window
Before the “300 Blocks” video was made, Ren Hailong had just paid off his loan. The video caught fire, and more and more people knew about his small wish, tens of thousands of comments. Ren Hailong look over one by one, see familiar nicknames, will reply one by one, “they are considered iron fans, people care about you, you always have to show.”
For Ren Hailong, shooting short videos, just like writing a diary. No filters and special effects, he mumbled to his phone. Ten dollars will cover the box lunch, the sunset on the way from work in the shipyard, the conversation in the group dormitory …… are his material.
Occasionally, Ren Hailong spurred himself to sleep early and read more books, fans became his supervisors, sometimes stay up late brushing the video, he reflected to the camera, people in the comments to comfort him “it’s okay, just like seeing yourself”.
More and more strangers came into his life, and he was curious about these strangers.
Tao Tao and his wife operate an account called “Jiejie’s family has treasures” on ShakeYin, promoting life goodies. A year ago, they brush to Ren Hailong’s video, coincidentally he live, clicked in to see, “very real, and even a little timid in the face of the camera, but he has light in his eyes.”
The couple saw the shadow of their own entrepreneurship in Ren Hailong, they are not very good at expressing the type of people. That live, Tao Tao concern Ren Hailong, but also private letter sent a few words of encouragement, Ren Hailong back off, said thank you, they even met.
Later, Ren Hailong also met in Hangzhou to do live with the goods of the hometown, the other party hopes that he came out to make a breakthrough. “Shipyard together working people are older than me, they take care of me, think I am still young, should not be consumed in this.”
In November, Ren Hailong resigned. He grabbed more than 200 tickets to Hangzhou, spending 700 to rent a single room. Before the New Year, he gave himself three months to learn something new.
If his father hadn’t gotten sick, Wang Xiaonan didn’t plan to return home and wouldn’t be doing short videos full time.
“I had thought that in the future I would be a small employee earning 3,000 a month in the county, looking for someone to marry, and that’s what my family planned for me.” A year ago, Wang Xiaonan felt that people did not particularly look up to her, and she did not think she could hold up a small family, always thinking that there was still her father.
After Wang Yunpo’s illness, the family needed expenses, and the monthly medical bills kept rising from one or two thousand. Later, there was a recurrence of the disease, and she took her father to Beijing to see a better doctor, which required more money. Wang Xiaonan had to push herself and find a way to change the situation.
Combining her profession, Wang Xiaonan came up with the idea of short videos. At that time she was doing take-out business, gave herself a “take-out girl” persona, she shot a period of time, found that it was not right, “can not be for a subject to shoot video, my life is what kind, then how should shoot.”
When spending time with her father, Wang Xiaonan would take some clips of her life with him and post them online. Some people said in the comments that “Dad looks like Tony Leung”, while others found the father-daughter interaction in Henan very funny. Inspired by the fans, Wang Xiaonan thought: maybe we can make this kind of lively story short video.
The biggest protagonist of Wang Xiaonan’s videos is her father.
At the end of 2019, Wang Xiaonan moved back home to the countryside, while taking care of his father, while picking up the camera in his hands, opened the road to short video entrepreneurship. There is no script, every day in front of the house are shot, shot during the day, the night clip release, Wang Xiaonan lived a life of staying up late as a meal.
With more and more fans, Wang Xiaonan found that life has some changes.
People in the village brush Shake Yin brush to the Mai Xiaodeng video, take the phone and ask Wang Yunpo what is going on, also began to call Wang Xiaonan Netflix, there are long-lost middle school classmates contact her. Wang Yunpo can’t read or write, but he knows his daughter has a lot of attention online, and when he goes out to buy something, he pulls out his phone to show others: “This is what my Ni’er shot.” If he is lucky, the other party will give him a discount.
Today, Wang Xiaonan has a contract with the platform and has a fixed income, plus the cooperation of commercial advertising, 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a month. In her opinion, she made the right decision when she graduated from her senior year of high school and gambled with 300 yuan to go out to work and study journalism.
There is bitterness and sweetness
Why do you sleep late? Ren Hailong feels that every day is meeting different people, things can not be finished thinking. He laughed at himself, he had a leader in the army and a squad leader in the shipyard, but when he arrived in Hangzhou, he had no one to spur him on. The physical work is gone, but there is a lot of mental work.
In Hangzhou, Ren Hailong frequently heard the word “demand”. The reporter asked him, “What do you want from our report? The brand sent him the chili sauce and cereal they wanted him to carry, sent him documents, and mentioned the demand.
Ren Hailong knew nothing about it, and he could only turn page by page to introduce it and write down the key points in his notebook. In his backpack to Hangzhou, Ren Hailong only put two clothes and a cell phone holder, he thought that “when he arrived here, he could immediately live with the goods”.
Ren Hailong knocked down the script of the commercial video in the memo.
When Ren Hailong was distressed, Tao Tao and his wife took the initiative to contact him. For the process of bringing goods and the possible problems, Tao Tao drew a mind map and gave it to Ren Hailong for reference. They also introduced live resources about the New Year’s Eve festival to Ren Hailong at the end of the year.
Ren Hailong specifically sent a short video to thank Tao Tao and his wife for their help. Tao Tao Tao saw the “@”, checked the account and found many fans to follow themselves and thanked them for their guidance to Ren Hailong.
Wang Xiaonan also received a demand for advertising cooperation some time ago. The brand wanted her to work with her father and read out sentences about what to wear with clothes. Wang Yunpo couldn’t read, and Wang Xiaonan repeated the unfamiliar sports brand name and asked her father to read along, thirty times, but it still didn’t go well.
Wang Yunpo got annoyed and said why do you need to act when you shoot videos. Wang Xiaonan is also angry with herself, taking ads and sending promotions, in order to make money to support the family, but she ignored the original purpose of her business, and did not consider her father’s feelings.
For more than a year, there are often doubts about the authenticity of Wang Xiaonan’s videos, that she is “selling out”, that she has millions of fans and could have lived in a big house long ago, but still stayed in the countryside acting. But there are more fans on the platform who support her. Some are moved by the feelings between father and daughter, while others hope she can receive more ads to improve the situation at home.
Wang Xiaonan looked at it all, and she felt that she should not do anything reluctantly in the future, or she should stick to the real thing to the end.
This year, Wang Xiaonan got a tractor driving license.
In mid-December, Shake for Ren Hailong to shoot creator short film. They walked along the Qiantang River while filming, not far from Ren Hailong, there were e-commerce models who took pictures for the new spring. For many things in front of him, Ren Hailong has not yet had time to feel through.
His bed is hanging above a picture of the Eiffel Tower, a fan to the message said “pagoda town river demon”, think of Ren Hailong unlucky, Ren Hailong replied: but I am the sea dragon, ah, can not be suppressed.
This year, Wang Xiaonan’s team, in addition to her father, and the figure of her cousin, she laughed and said “she also became the boss. This year’s New Year, the family of more than 30 people are planning to Wang Yunpo family reunion to see the family’s most famous “Mai Xiaodeng”. In order to welcome a large family, father and daughter are busy renovating the old kitchen that has been used for nearly 20 years.
In 2020, from the countryside to the city, shipyard workers Ren Hailong changed a way of life, catching the shimmering light in an unfamiliar world and seeing the possibilities of the future. From the city to the countryside, 95-year-old girl Wang Xiaonan changed a way of living, giving her past self a satisfactory answer sheet, she held her father’s hand and walked with more confidence.
Even if there will still be a lot of uncertainty in the coming year, but they have seen the light in the cracks and they themselves are beginning to radiate light.
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