They travel virtually for you

Reports.

she has found that more and more influencers have started to live-broadcast their travels.

Liu used to be a famous football blogger and wrote two novels, with more than 700,000 followers on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.

“Being interactive is important. I would switch the images between the picturesque views and myself from time to time. I like chatting with them and I try my best to answer all their questions,” she says.

She’s got a lot of topics to talk about and would combine advertisements such as for digital products with her chat.

“The schedule is often tight, from morning to night. On our way to the next scenic spot, we are busy editing the pictures and writing down our feelings as we have to update social media in real time,” she says.

They often burn the midnight oil to process the photos taken in daytime and tackle some trifling tasks.

Once she only slept two hours due to flight delays, and still joined the next day’s itinerary with plenty of energy.

When she comes back to Beijing, she writes an informative travel note including her views about the local culture and society.

“It’s a competitive profession with great pressure. It’s always essential to improve yourself and make good content,” she says. She only rests about four or five days a month.

She recently finished a three-month study of English in Los Angeles and is planning to improve her photography and video-editing skills.

Many fans are university students who are curious about her job, and she is planning to offer guidance to those who are interested in choosing the profession.

“I tell them being an influencer is not just about indulging in food and pleasureseeking. No pain, no gain. But if you really want to do it, you need to improve some basic skills such as photography,” she says.

Creative content

However, there are voices of caution.

“You need to have seen much of the world at first because being an influencer is not just about taking photos and writing articles,” says 37-year-old Qi Dong from Shanghai.

“It takes time for you to become famous enough to financially support yourself from the earnings.

“The most important thing is to have your own ideas and personality,” he says. “As many are entering the industry, only those who make creative content will survive.”

He’s been striving to promote train-travel culture, and he’s writing a book about his one-month train trip throughout Russia. He’s taken many photos and filmed documentaries about train travel.

When Qi was aged 4, he often took trains with his parents from Shandong province to Shanghai to see his grandparents. Trains represent thrilling journeys as well as homesickness for him.

While high-speed trains are very popular in China now, Qi has a preference for the “green-skinned train”, which is the slow olden-day transport with cheaper tickets but lacks air conditioning. They first hit the tracks in the 1950s; most of them are no longer in use.

He’s taken several hundred trips on those trains, where each window view is a miniature of the Chinese countryside.

The experience can be interactive: He once found several chickens under his seat, and villagers in ethnic group costumes will hawk goods such as herbs.

He says some overseas train culture is more developed than that of China, but that’s changing. For example, on the Kunming-Lijiang “culture train” (the train is decorated inside out with all kinds of cultural patterns unique to Lijang), travelers can sip a cocktail and sing at a well-decorated karaoke bar.

He has always loved traveling and writing, and in 2012 he started working as a freelancer for print and new media to share his train travels.

“As you don’t keep office hours, you need to be self-disciplined,” he says.

Contact the writer at xulin@chinadaily.com.cn