Rural Taobao Rural Culture Festival Held: Rural Celebrity Livestreaming Broadcast Simultaneously Across Four Provinces on the Same Day
On August 10, Taobao Live was exceptionally lively. From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., in Zhanyi, Yunnan; Tongxiang, Zhejiang; Gushi, Henan; and Suning, Hebei, internet celebrities, Rural Taobao partners and local residents took turns showing netizens the local pristine natural environment, culture and art, and quality agricultural products through rural celebrity livestreaming, presenting the distinctive rural specialties and culture of east, west, north and south in a real-time, interactive and highly entertaining way.
This was one segment of Alibaba's first Rural Taobao Rural Culture Festival, which is currently still in full swing. What is the Rural Culture Festival for? What does it reveal about Alibaba's rural strategy?
Simultaneous Broadcasting Across Four Provinces: Rural Celebrity Livestreaming Goes All Out
At 10 a.m. on August 10, the rural celebrity livestream in Zhanyi, Yunnan officially began. Flower cakes are a uniquely distinctive delicacy of Yunnan, but do you know how flower cakes are made? The internet celebrity host and the Village Taobao partner led netizens to pick roses together, make flower cakes and rose jam, and dance ethnic dances amid the beautiful mountains and rivers with local residents dressed in distinctive ethnic costumes. There were also colorful five-color flower rice, dyed purely with natural plants, and the famous Yunnan crossing-the-bridge rice noodles need no introduction. Even more interesting was Zhanyi spicy chicken: local children competed to catch free-range chickens, while adults lit wood-fired stoves to cook up delicious food, full of rich ethnic flavor and hometown taste.
According to Wang Hui, head of the Rural Taobao rural celebrity livestreaming project, besides Zhanyi in Yunnan, three other provinces also carried out rural celebrity livestreams on the same day, featuring not only displays of local products but also introductions to special skills, art and culture, and eco-tourism routes, all of which will be presented one by one in the subsequent Culture Festival. "Through livestreaming, we show rural agricultural products, culture and scenery to consumers, and in an interactive and fun way bring the source of production and crafting processes directly before consumers' eyes, enabling them to watch while they buy," Wang Hui said.
In Zhaogang Township, Gushi County, Xinyang City, Henan Province, Gushi chickens, ducks, geese, preserved shredded radish, and salted duck eggs are all local specialty agricultural products. The mission of the Taobao Live channel with nearly 190,000 followers was to present these products to netizens so that more people would know about and buy them. Starting at 3 p.m., the beautiful host set out from the Gushi Chicken Museum in the Zhaogang Township eco-breeding park, acting cute while showing netizens Gushi's ecological environment and quality agricultural products, personally feeding free-range chickens, catching chickens and collecting eggs, and actively interacting with netizens, giving away Gushi agricultural products to those who answered questions correctly. The two-hour livestream attracted nearly 30,000 netizens to watch.
In Tongxiang, Zhejiang, lotus seed soup is a local famous dish, and picking lotus seeds among the lotus flowers became an indispensable activity. Sanzhenzhai beef, with a history of more than 160 years, represents the life of old Tongxiang residents. Tongxiang is also rich in chrysanthemums; those who have been to Tongxiang and drunk chrysanthemum tea all say Tongxiang's chrysanthemum tea is more fragrant. The host caught ducks in the lotus garden and, when resting, paired beef with refreshing chrysanthemum tea, which was simply delightful. In Suning, Hebei, tree-hole honey is as famous as the local martial arts, so after taking netizens to cut honey from tree holes and spin honey, the hosts also showed everyone wonderful local martial arts performances and offered a pipa performance.
The reporter learned that this was one segment of the Alibaba Rural Culture Festival. Alibaba's first Rural Culture Festival takes "Joy · in the Countryside" as its theme, uses distinctive rural culture as its keynote, and uses Rural Taobao as its implementation platform, selecting four counties nationwide to participate in Taobao livestreaming of agricultural products, presenting the distinctive rural specialties and culture of east, west, north and south in a real-time, interactive and highly entertaining way.
Rural Culture Festival: Products, Arts and Public Welfare
Wang Yongsheng is an Alibaba Rural Taobao partner, currently working at the Rural Taobao service station in Bali Village, Gushi County, and was one of the hosts of this livestream. He said that on December 28 last year, the service station officially set up in Bali Village, providing local residents with free online purchasing services. "At first, residents were doubtful and concerned, but after we kept working at it, once people truly benefited, they began to be willing to trust it and repurchase products."
Helping villagers make online purchases is only the most basic work of the service station; other services also include online bill payment, Alibaba financial online loans, and Alibaba Health online medical care. This livestream, meanwhile, was an effort to help villagers sell agricultural products upward. "At first, what we did was channel high-tech products from the city into the countryside, and now what we do is help residents sell their quality agricultural products. The former helped residents save money, while the latter helps them earn money."
It is reported that within two years, the village Taobao points opened by Rural Taobao have covered 29 provinces and 300 counties. According to Alibaba's internal statement: the opening of 16,000 village Taobao points indicates that Rural Taobao has basically completed the construction of the "heaven, earth and people" three networks: local government collaboration, basic channel building and partner recruitment. Those undertaking the basic organizational work of the Culture Festival are precisely the nearly 16,000 village Taobao points and their partners. Activities across multiple sections, including education and medical care going to the countryside, rural tourism, inheritance of folk artisan skills, folk dance competitions and county-level expos, will roll out throughout August.
Regarding this Culture Festival, Zhao Yuhong, deputy county head of Gushi County, believes it is of great significance for boosting the online visibility of Gushi's agricultural products and opening up sales channels for agricultural products, and also provides a shortcut to poverty alleviation and prosperity through e-commerce for the county's poor population, offering strong help for the county to win the battle of targeted e-commerce poverty alleviation. Zhu Xuejun, deputy director of the county people's congress standing committee, is also full of expectations for developing e-commerce. He believes that as a national-level poverty-stricken county, Gushi faces urgent time and heavy tasks in poverty alleviation, and e-commerce poverty alleviation is an important measure of industrial poverty alleviation. Developing Gushi's e-commerce industry can effectively sell Gushi's specialty agricultural products, achieve increased farmer income and development of the food processing industry, drive poor households to employment and poverty alleviation, and push the development of the e-commerce industry to a new level.
"Three Centers": The Direction of Village Taobao Version 3.0
Alibaba's first Rural Taobao Culture Festival includes five major chapters: Rural Art, a competition of folk dance with the most regional characteristics; Rural Product, the most storied specialties and food going upward; Rural Scenery, the most beautiful cultural tourism routes; Rural Masterpiece, cultural heritage artisans representing the greatest craftsmanship; and Rural Love, covering both education and medical care, with education featuring super classrooms and summer camps, and health featuring telemedicine and charitable donations.
Before this livestream, the Culture Festival had already opened on August 8. That day, in the classroom of Yatuan Village Primary School in Zhanyi County, Qujing, Yunnan, more than 60 rural children were watching via video livestream as a teacher in the Beijing Museum of Natural History explained the process of China's discovery of its first dinosaur fossil. Besides Yatuan Village, in the nearly 16,000 villages that also have village Taobao points, children can, if willing, watch courses through the video equipment installed at the village Taobao points and interact with the teaching teacher in real time. This was the first lesson of the "Super Classroom" prepared by Alibaba Rural Taobao for left-behind children, and also the rather simple opening ceremony of Alibaba's first Rural Culture Festival.
Wang Hui introduced that the Rural Culture Festival officially launched on August 8. August 10 was the rural celebrity livestream of specialty agricultural products and local art and culture, and a series of folk dance competitions will follow, continuing until September 25. From the 23rd to the 25th, there will also be offline activities such as an agricultural specialty products expo and the folk dance finals, with the entire event lasting one and a half months.
Sun Lijun, an Alibaba Group partner and group vice president, introduced that the Culture Festival builds a platform. During the course of various activities, it connects resources from Alibaba's e-commerce, agricultural product upward sales, health, travel and cultural entertainment business lines, so that the two ends of the platform connect urban civilization and rural culture. When these two form a two-way circulation, that is where the opportunity for rural development lies.
After going through version 1.0 of purchasing on behalf of others and version 2.0 of recruiting full-time partners, upgrading village Taobao points into "three centers" is the direction for Village Taobao version 3.0 given by Sun Lijun. The three centers are the ecological service center, the entrepreneurship incubation center and the cultural public welfare center. The responsibilities that village Taobao points will bear are by no means as simple as shopping and selling goods; rather, they will connect all of Alibaba's resources from e-commerce, finance and health to cultural entertainment, achieving the sinking of the entire service system; and partners will transform into service providers, becoming Alibaba's execution terminals for providing all-around services to rural areas in daily life convenience, entrepreneurship training and support, and cultural entertainment.