Host Heo Yun-mi Photo: CFP

Imagine there's a place where someone can go and sit down for an intimate chat with a gorgeous South Korean beauty; a place where even a simple cheap gift will cause her to blush with praise for the gift-giver.

Does this sound appealing to you?

Maybe yes, maybe no. However, some people certainly find this type of place appealing, as online "live streaming chat rooms" are becoming all the rage on the Internet in China.

These virtual rooms are heaven for many men who live their lives online and a rising industry worth some 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) to businessman, but it is also a cruel battlefield where appearance, dance performances and even skill at video games can decide which hostess can rise to the top of the heap.

The online "civil war" in the Chinese mainland has been a rough one as multiple live streaming platforms have been popping up one after another. Even more recently, competition has become even fiercer as rivals from South Korea have now joined the battlefield.

With these new arrivals, some Chinese hosts literally cried as they saw their viewer numbers drop dramatically.

An expanding industry

More than 1.5 million users had flooded into South Korean hostess Heo Yun-mi's live streaming chat room. The chat window on screen was basically a blur due to the sheer amount of messages being posted by viewers. Such popularity was new to Heo.

The attractive young hostess had just finished a sexy dance, and her chest was moving dramatically as she breathed heavily.

Calls for "one more dance!" were constantly popping up on the screen.

She told Meiri Renwu, a WeChat media outlet, that she was both surprised and grateful the first time she saw such a response. Now, she has slowly gotten used to the attention and is able to remain calm during streams.

Before bringing her channel to China, she was a hit hostess on South Korean live streaming platforms. At her peak back then she could have maybe 12,000 concurrent viewers, yet in China she gets almost 125 times as many viewers.

The market in China is indeed vast. According to data from consultation company iResearch, there were nearly 200 live streaming platforms for a total of 200 million users in 2015. That's almost one seventh of the country's population.

It's estimated that the market could grow to 15 billion yuan this year.

Even Wang Sicong, the son of Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, spent thousands of yuan on one South Korean host.

When host Yanghanna was dancing on Panda TV, one user sent several "fotiaoqiang," a virtual gift worth 1,000 yuan.

Then Wang Sicong joined the "room" and got into a "gift war" with that user. At one point the user sent a gift worth 140,000 yuan, after which Wang sent one worth 400,000 yuan, a new record for the hostess, who gets a percentage of what these gifts are worth.

Yanghanna was so surprised she cried.

Even though this was most likely as promotional stunt - Wang is the founder of Panda TV -  the pressure on domestic hosts is real. On July 6, the highest-ranking host in China was a South Korean hostess who had 15,000 concurrent viewers at one point, while the top Chinese host ranked only at 11 with 9,700 viewers.

Watching women eat



Dancing is a trump card for many South Korean hostesses, but sometimes audiences still pile in even when they don't dance.

At 8 pm on July 5, Lee Soo-bin started her show. During the next three hours, she mainly just sat in a chair and ate cookies as viewers numbering in the tens of thousands watched on.

Lee's charm is mainly physical. She first rose to fame as pictures of her circulated online.

"Normally I get tens of thousands of viewers, but there can be many more during holidays such as the Spring Festival," Lee told Meiri Renwu.

Lee is experienced in attracting male viewers, who make up a majority of the audiences on live streaming platforms in the mainland.

To better seize viewers' attention, Lee films her shows using an HD camera that cost her more than 5,000 yuan, and spends more than an hour getting her makeup ready. She also changes costumes regularly during live streams, going from a nurse to a teacher and so on.

She said she has found that there is almost no difference between audiences in South Korea and China, so her four years as a hostess in her own country makes her an expert.

Professional performers



Compared with Chinese hostesses, those from South Korea are often skilled performers. Heo said she feels almost no pressure from Chinese hosts.

"I can pole dance and play the guitar and the piano," she explained.

She said that although some Chinese hosts are pretty, and some can dance, they lack variety.

Heo and other South Korean hostesses have a reason to be confident. Many of them were trained as performers in their home country. Heo was once a member of a girl band that produced an EP.

This is one of the reasons South Korea is famous for being a "star-production factory." Many aspiring performers join entertainment agencies at a very young age and are known as trainees. Only a few go on to become actors or actresses, some become singers, while most trainees are weeded out.

But even those trainees who have been weeded out can end up becoming big hits in the live streaming industry in China since they can easily beat out Chinese hosts who have no training.

Another advantage is that South Korean hostesses are not coming here alone, but with their agencies. Whereas Chinese hostesses are usually just working on their own.

These South Korean entertainment companies have the resources to carry out market research to better understand customer preferences, train their hosts and provide support in the form of costumes, interpreters or schooling so they may learn Chinese.

To keep her edge, Heo said she spends three hours practicing pole dancing and the piano everyday, and watches Chinese TV shows to learn Chinese even when showering.

It seems that in almost every aspect except the ability to speak the local language, these hostesses can easily beat their Chinese counterparts.
Newspaper headline: Webcam war