Video clips give a precious insight

Did you ever stop and think about everyday situations that you perhaps take for granted? Take trains, for example. China has the world's biggest rail system. Every day, millions of people travel by train. But how are these trains dispatched? What if one or two trains are delayed? How do railway operators keep them on track? These are just some of the questions that Wu Songlei, 26, and his team try to figure out and clarify with their educational videos.

A Jiangxi Normal University graduate, Wu always dreamed of producing videos that provided clear explanations of complex problems in an easy-to-understand way.

Despite majoring in engineering management, he gravitated to video production, a subject he found more engaging. After graduation, he researched the market for more than two years while working in a new media company in Beijing. "I love watching popular science videos and believe there are many people in China who also love to watch the same videos as me," says Wu. He adds that compared with those released on foreign websites, many of the videos in China catered mainly to children. Wu says he found a gap in the market for adults, and saw the business potential.

On Nov 30, 2017, Wu launched his first video to explain how surveillance equipment works. The video was made in his spare time and received more than 368,000 views on the video-sharing platform Bilibili. Viewers left more than 1,400 comments.

"Video surveillance systems work like a safety guard in our daily lives. Many netizen comments were about the necessity of having the system. Their discussions helped me to confirm that my work was providing them with the information they wanted and gave me the confidence to start my own business."

Wu then quit his job and built up his team in early 2018. He began uploading the videos regularly. So far, he and his team have made 113 videos, including What Is the Blockchain?, How to Produce Beautiful Fireworks and How Is a Map Pictured? These videos were not only published on Bilibili, but also on Sina Weibo and an official WeChat account under the identical account name PaperClip, which now boasts followers of 1.4 million to 2.9 million respectively.

Wu's team has also grown to 22 people from the initial two. At first, they released a video every two weeks－now it is two videos weekly.

"It is not easy," says Wu. "Six teammates prepare for the Q&A session, others make the video, each of which takes three weeks to complete, so we work on different topics simultaneously."

The most popular video on Bilibili is about how paper money is made. This received 1.3 million views. The video about trains on Sina Weibo reached 6.23 million views.

Understanding each topic requires a great deal of research, says Wu. "Interviewing experts doesn't always work because they may use professional terms that can be hard to comprehend. We look up information in books and academic theses and also search for reports published by different organizations. In order to make things more easily understood, we use pictures as well as cartoons in our videos.

"I get a sense of achievement every time a video has been watched more than 1 million times, and also feel responsible to keep producing videos of high quality."

Wu says that people leave messages about topics that interest them in the hope that Wu's team will make videos about them. "The topics seem endless," says Wu with a smile.

More opportunities

The number of internet video users has seen a rapid growth over the past three years.

It shot up from 565 million in July 2017 to 609 million in 2018 and then to 759 million in 2019, according to the China Statistical Report on Internet Development published by the China Internet Network Information Center. By mid-2018, 76 percent of netizens had watched online videos in the previous year. The number rose to 88.8 percent a year later.

It's not just about education but also about fun and entertainment. Fabricio Di Paolo, known as Lord Vinheteiro online, is a pianist who was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1980. Di Paolo began to play piano at the age of 8 and majored in veterinarian studies at the State University of Sao Paulo. He worked as a vet after graduation but never forgot his dream of becoming a pianist.

Music was his first love so he concentrated on being a pianist. But attracting an audience and followers was difficult. So in 2008, Di Paolo began uploading videos on YouTube. To gain more exposure online he launched his Bilibili channel in December 2017 to explore the market in China. In order to attract more people, he plays music that is easily recognizable, such as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

"People hear the classics but most of them don't know the title of the songs they listen to. I try to introduce titles and composers to people," he says.

Another strategy Di Paolo used to draw people's attention was to look at the camera, instead of the piano keys as he plays, in each of his videos.

"Obviously, playing while looking at the camera is harder than regular playing, but it is something I like to do. It is a style I created to generate more interest for people who watch my videos," he explains, adding that not every piece can be played while looking at the camera.

According to Di Paolo, it was not until early 2019 that his followers on Bilibili grew dramatically, when they began to talk about his unique performance style.

Now he has more than 738,000 followers on Bilibili. He has uploaded 105 videos, which have been viewed around 27.8 million times. His video Can You Hear the Difference Between Expensive and Cheap Pianos is the most-watched with over 1.5 million hits. In that video, he plays six pianos whose prices vary from $499 to $2.5 million to show their different sounds.

In November 2019, Di Paolo received an invitation from Bilibili, asking him to play at the platform's New Year Gala held in Beijing called The Most Beautiful Night of 2019 on Dec 31. It was his first trip to China. When the camera zoomed in on him, he looked straight back, as he usually does.

"It was because of the development of video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and Bilibili that I was able to start showing my piano skills around the world. Without the internet, I could never have become a pianist," he says, adding that he loves playing in China and hopes to return.

A career on the internet

The Most Beautiful Night of 2019 lasted for three hours and its videos were uploaded online, receiving nearly 90 million hits. The gala was also a celebration of Bilibili's 10th anniversary and the audience members were selected from its users.

One user commented on the platform that there are many people with great skills and it is the video-sharing platforms that give them the chance to stand out on stage. Another netizen named Liu Shushu attended the gala and commented on the platform that she never imagined seeing her idol perform on stage in front of her.

Other stars included Meng Xiaojie, a flute player with 300,000 followers who teaches at Harbin Conservatory of Music, and a singer known as Feizao Jun (which means "soap bacteria") who has nearly 550,000 followers on the platform. Most of them started to release videos on Bilibili over two years ago.

Chen Leyi, a singer who was born in 2000 in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, is one of them.

"I've loved singing and dancing since I was a little girl and always dreamed of having my own concert," recalls Chen, a vocal music performance major student at the Zhejiang Vocational Academy of Art. She also loves Japanese cartoons and met many friends who share the same passion through QQ and other forums such as Baidu Tieba and acgbbs.net.

In 2014, Chen created her Bilibili account. She has watched many animated dance videos on the platform and practiced them at home. On Feb 14, 2017, she uploaded her first dance video Ranshang Nide Yanse ("I was painted with your color"), an animated romantic dance from Japan. The video quickly gained over 10,000 hits. With the dance, the high school student gained her first 1,000 followers on the platform.

"It was a great encouragement because I never expected to attract so many followers just because of one dance," she says.

Since then, she has been regularly uploading videos every month. Chen also started to release her singing videos over two years ago. She chose vocal music performance as her major to enhance her skills, and her following on Bilibili has now grown to over 479,000. Her 70 videos have gained 6.5 million views.

In June 2019, Chen was invited to sing at a Shanghai concert organized by Bilibili every year since 2013 to gather fans of "animation, comic and games", or ACG, together.

"There were over 10,000 people in the audience. To try and make my performance more interactive, I spent days choosing the song, aLIEz, from the Japanese cartoon Aldnoah Zero, which is really popular," says Chen. "I was excited to have people sing along with me at my debut show. It felt like a dream come true."