App helps ring in a better life

A modern phone can put the world at the user's fingertips. Calls, messaging, photos and information access, all make for an enhanced lifestyle. But sometimes, these phones are of little practical use. Leku Wuniure's 63-year-old mother communicates in the Yi language. She can't read Chinese or speak Mandarin and is unable to read numbers. Consequently, a simple, taken-for-granted feature of any modern phone, say finding a contact, can prove to be difficult. Whenever she wants to call her son, she has to ask someone to help her to dial his number.

Leku, 25, a young man of the Yi ethnic group, naturally, wanted to help. So he created an app that responds to his mother's request to "call my son" in the Yi language. Once this is said, the app will automatically dial his number. The app is called Yayou. It turned out to be a fantastic aid for his mother and has also benefited many among the more than 8 million Yi people in China.

"With the app, I wanted to help my mom, as well as the Yi people," says Leku, a college student at Southwest Petroleum University in Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province. "Besides my mother's plight, I've also witnessed some villagers, who left to make a living as migrant workers in cities, suffering financial losses or misunderstanding due to the obstacles in communication."

The dream is becoming bigger－after more than two years' development, Leku and his partner Mise Achang are ready to launch an updated version of their app in May. The 2.0 version of Yayou will have several new functions, providing news and entertainment content, as well as online shopping services, in both the Yi and Chinese languages. What's more exciting, some users will be able to test the new voice assistant function and interact with their smartphone in the Yi language, before its final release.

The two entrepreneurs hope that, like the name of the app－Yayou meaning "potato" in the Yi language, a common, indispensable ingredient for the Yi people living in the Daliangshan area, Sichuan province－the app could be a helpful tool in people's lives.

Four years ago, Leku enrolled in Southwest Petroleum University in Chengdu, majoring in surveying and mapping engineering. Leaving Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture where he has lived for more than two decades, Leku missed cultural richness and the singing and dancing of his people in his hometown.

Leku's childhood friend, Mise, 24, who graduated last year from a vocational school in Chongqing, has felt the same pangs of loneliness when he stayed in the metropolis to study hospitality administration.

The duo decided to develop the app initially to gather audio and video materials of Yi songs. They took a year to create the app and released the first version in December 2018.

More than 6,000 people registered on Yayou in the first three months, which encouraged the duo to further develop their app to serve more people.

While Leku studied in Chengdu and began the startup there over two years ago, his mother could only wait for his call once a week to chat with him for a short time. Leku felt an urgency to develop a voice assistant function to help his mother, and other people in his hometown.

With the app, users could listen to more Yi-language songs, and read news presented on the app. They can watch videos in the Yi language about how to fight against the novel coronavirus.

Thinking big

The app, apart from bringing greater convenience, can also serve as an important cultural tool. It can be used as a database to collect oral and written records of Yi culture and help preserve it.

"We will ask Yi singers to record songs," Mise says.

"Moreover, for the elderly people who still remember our traditional songs, we will help them have the old songs recorded or filmed.

"For example, there are some beautiful songs that I heard shepherds singing when I was a kid. I hope such songs will be recorded and passed down to future generations."

Currently, their automatic speech recognition for the Yi language only has 60 to 70 percent accuracy. Technicians have to update the program when sentences can't be recognized by the system. The team now has 12 technicians.

"My plan is to develop this Yi language voice assistant in two or three years, and we will only launch it when it's ready. We don't want to provide any half-done products," Leku says.

Their work and goals were ably assisted by the Yi people. Singers and directors promised to support the app by posting their audio and video materials for free. Some Yi students also volunteered to help test the voice assistant function and offer their version of Yi oral materials.

Professors of the Yi language from Southwest Minzu University and Minzu University of China also helped them check on the translation into Mandarin. "New words keep coming, especially recently concerning COVID-19," Leku says.

The app now boasts more than 400,000 registered users. "Most of them are Yi people, but some are people who want to know more about Yi culture," Leku says.

Money is always an issue for any entrepreneur. So far they have accumulated debts of more than 200,000 yuan ($28,230) each in order to keep their team running.

"Our resources are limited. If we can have some investment, the development of the app, especially the voice assistant function, can be sped up," Leku says.

Each month brings a paycheck day, and that can be stressful. He has to take some part-time photography work to get extra income, and sometimes, he has to borrow money from friends, to pay the team's wages.

Luckily the Yayou app has won him several college venture capital contests with some prize money that can help him ease the financial stress.

He says he won't give up even if there is no investment, and he believes that what he's been doing has benefited many.

Besides the voice assistant function, Leku also added an online shopping function on the app, through which he hopes to help his hometown sell its products to a wider market. "Our wooden lacquerware is well-crafted, and our buckwheat is also quite good," Leku says.

He also started to open brick-and-mortar stores in his village and plans to open one in each large village in Daliangshan.

"It has been an impoverished area for a long time and the country has helped us a lot. I feel that I have a responsibility to contribute to the process as well, by doing something for my hometown," he says.