ZHEJIANG, East China — Wearing a tight black tank top revealing his well-defined chest and arms, Lin Yangduo tucks a ripe persimmon from the orchard behind him snugly between a massive bicep and forearm. “Babe, do you want to eat persimmons?” he asks the camera.

“You can eat them standing up,” he says, taking a bite out of the fruit, dripping with juice, “sitting down,” — another wet bite — “or against a tree” — a bite again. “Bring the whole family to Jingshan Village.” The video garnered over 160,000 likes on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and over 100,000 on Xiaohongshu, known internationally as RedNote.

A former national canoeing athlete from southern China’s Guangdong province, Lin retired at 18 and later became a fitness coach. Now, with his creative partner He Geping, he makes short videos promoting Xinchang County in Zhejiang province.

They market village tourism, local specialties, and agricultural products — often with Lin’s physique doing as much of the selling as the scenery.

Over the past year, the pair has built a following of more than 800,000 across platforms, part of a wider boom in “rural support,” or zhunong, content, in which creators market village life and local products to China’s vast short-video audience. 

Naturally shy, Lin has watched his physique become part of the appeal, even as the videos remain framed around village tourism and local products. As viewers fixate on his body, and other creators push the format further, the genre has begun to draw scrutiny.

Some accounts have since been restricted or blocked, raising questions about how far physical appeal can be used to sell rural China.

A star is born

Always dressed tidily, hair neatly cropped, and speaking with a southern accent, Lin had previously tried making content on his own about fitness and pets, but had struggled to get the accounts off the ground.

While out fishing in early 2025, Lin met He, a 36-year-old content creator who ran a successful account about his hometown, Yangyu Village in Xinchang County, with tens of thousands of followers.

“He was an athlete, which gives him a naturally upright and positive image — he comes across as very reliable,” He says. “I think that kind of temperament fits well with promoting rural hometown values.” Recognizing the potential of a partnership, the two decided to collaborate using Xinchang as their base. 

Known for its Longjing tea, nicknamed “green gold,” Xinchang was already a rural-content hub when the duo arrived. Since 2017, the county has produced several influencers with millions of followers, while local authorities set up livestreaming bases and encouraged outside creators to work there.

By March 2025, Lin and He began experimenting with three-minute vlogs documenting village life. Lin picked vegetables, caught fish, and cooked over open fires on flagstones as He filmed. One video showed Lin competing with villagers to see who could dig the most wild vegetables. 

“Our plan was to follow a path similar to Li Ziqi, creating rural documentaries that integrate Xinchang’s scenery and cuisine,” He says. But in a crowded field, the content struggled to stand out. 

So He tried something lighter. He filmed Lin under bright pink blossoms lip-syncing “Peach Blossoms Everywhere,” a 2006 Chinese pop hit that made the setting part of the joke. 

The video drew more than 300,000 views. “We were just filming for fun — we didn’t expect it to become so popular,” He says. 

After a few more similar videos, viewers began commenting on Lin’s physique. Under one video, a popular comment read, “A woman’s intuition tells me you shouldn’t be wearing a shirt! That chest and those abs!” 

A month later, He pushed the formula further. Lin appeared in a sports vest for the first time, showing his muscles while balancing a teapot on his arm and saying, “Babe, want some Dafo Longjing tea?” The video became their first to surpass 20,000 likes.

Within a year, they had become one of Xinchang’s most visible rural-content teams. In recognition of the work to promote local products and tourism, He’s village even gave Lin the official title of “Youth League Secretary,” and later, “Rural Revitalization Promoter.”

Body of work 

But the more his videos promoted the local economy, the more viewers focused on his body.  

Comments below his videos rarely, if ever, mention the local produce Lin is marketing or the villages and scenery. Instead, often sexual, admiring, or joking in nature, they talk about Lin and his muscles. Netizens ask him to remove his clothing, or post AI-generated images of him topless, for example, bursting a pineapple he wedges into his bicep. 

With years of experience managing accounts, He understands trends and traffic better, and for Lin, that has meant adapting to what viewers want to see: more of him. 

Yet Lin says it makes him uncomfortable. Even now, he feels embarrassed if too many people are around while filming. In the videos, Lin often tries to suppress laughter and appears shy. But his awkwardness on camera has only made him more appealing to viewers. 

He recalls a highly upvoted comment: “A forcibly picked melon — who knows if it’s sweet?” — the melon, a metaphor for Lin, whose participation in the video appeared forced. Another replied, “Sweet or not, at least it quenches thirst.”

After videos in which Lin revealed his muscles went viral, many viewers labeled his content as cabian, or “skirting the edge,” a genre of videos that are purposefully sexually suggestive to amass more likes, but not profane enough that they violate platform rules. 

Other creators began to imitate Lin, often wearing even less. In one case, a village official in the southwest province of Yunnan filmed himself shirtless in an orange orchard, picking fruit while hawking the products to viewers. Within a couple of months, domestic media reported that the orchard had sold nearly 80 tons of oranges.

Domestic media reported that at least 70 village officials or accounts had posted similar “skirting the edge” rural promotion content by February, with some gaining hundreds of thousands of followers within just a few months.

Amid the hype, Lin set his own rules: “specific outfits for specific settings” — for example, only going shirtless near water — and avoiding vulgar content. Even when wearing a shirt, he insists on unbuttoning only one button, while He considers unbuttoning three acceptable.

Lin disagrees with the claim that his content is “skirting the edge,” asking, “If two people both wear tight clothes — one works out and one doesn’t — are they both considered cabian?”

He takes a more relaxed view. “Viewers are just having fun,” he says. “As long as it’s not illegal, I don’t see the big problem.”

But Lin’s caution later proved wise, as cabian accounts began getting blocked. In early 2026, the Yunnan blogger’s account was reported, restricted, then blocked. State news agency Xinhua also published an article criticizing rural cabian content, questioning how creators can uphold responsibility to farmers under the lure of traffic.

Just before that, in late 2025, Lin’s official title of “Youth League Secretary” was removed by village officials and changed to “Cultural Envoy of Xinchang County.” 

His account name was also changed from “Lin Xiaobai at the grassroots level” — a phrase normally used to describe the work of village officials — to “Lin Xiaobai takes you around Xinchang.”

In full view 

Neither Lin nor He knows how long the traffic will last. “We’ll just take it step by step,” Lin says.

Now, in addition to collaborating with local tourism authorities, Lin and He travel weekly to a state-owned livestreaming base in the central Hubei province to sell agricultural products. The livestream usually lasts over four hours. They also travel to other regions for promotional events and livestreams. 

“It feels like I’ve achieved something I always wanted — I can stay with my family while promoting my hometown,” He says.

But the unexpected traffic has also brought anxiety. “With social media, you have to keep changing and innovating. Every format has a lifecycle, so I feel very anxious about traffic,” He says.

As for Lin, when traveling, the first thing he does is locate a gym. He trains four times a week. “If I miss one practice, I feel uncomfortable,” he says.

At his busiest, at the end of last year, he went two months without training. “I didn’t dare work out because I wasn’t getting enough sleep,” he says, noting that he also couldn’t eat regularly. “Fitness and social media work conflict a lot. It’s hard to balance both.”

Before coming to Xinchang, Lin’s life as a fitness coach was simpler. He’d originally planned on opening his own club, but after the pandemic, the cost and risk of running a gym became too high.

As his videos gained popularity, Lin began to be recognized in public. People would ask to touch his muscles, and he would refuse them. He also refuses to change clothes outdoors after a fan filmed him changing and posted it online, which made him uncomfortable. 

Few friends in Guangdong know what Lin does now, and he has never reposted his videos to his social media feed. When friends send him his own videos and ask if it’s him, he jokes, “No.” After filming, he avoids watching his own content.

Instead, he prefers watching “Tom and Jerry” cartoons, and his profile picture and nearly all his saved WeChat emojis are of Tom. “He often makes exaggerated and funny expressions, so it’s hilarious. When I was a kid, I watched the Chaoshan-dialect version, which made it even funnier,” referencing the Guangdong region.

When He showed him a recent video idea — in which Lin would lie on a sofa, changing outfits with each spin of a fan blade — Lin’s first reaction was, “It’s too revealing.” He suggested Lin choose his own outfits. 

Two days later, the video was released, featuring Lin in five separate outfits: a bathrobe, two shirts, a black vest, and unrevealing motorcycle gear. Comments joked, “You’ve buttoned up so tightly — looks like you’re not in any hurry to sell.”

On Xiaohongshu, users flocked to the comments, posting stills from the video. In many, they'd edited out his shirt.

Additional reporting: Lü Xiao; editors: Marianne Gunnarsson and Apurva.

(Header image: Visuals from Douyin, reedited by Sixth Tone)