Kuaishou, a new lifeline for Tibetan oral cultures in China?

By Tsering Samdrup

Like people all over the world, Tibetans in western China today spend increasing amounts of their lives on their mobile devices, using a variety of applications to communicate, share, and entertain. Kuaishou (快手) ‘fast hand’, a short video and livestreaming platform developed in 2011 by Beijing Kuaishou Technology, is one such application that has emerged as a popular choice amongst Tibetans in recent years. With a straightforward and user-friendly interface, Kuaishou is especially popular among Tibetans who do not read and write Chinese. As Tibetan audiences flock to Kuaishou, a number of new influencers have begun creating Tibetan language content building their own fame and encouraging the transmission and knowledge of Tibetan oral traditions in the process. Not only popular amongst individual Tibetan content creators, official TV stations such as Amdo TV (ཨ་མདོ་བརྙན་འཕྲིན།) also use this platform to reach a broader audience when they organise New Year’s gala (ལོ་སར་དགོང་ཚོགས།) or competitions for traditions such as proverbs (གཏམ་དཔེ།) and dunglen ‘mandolin accompanied songs’ (རྡུང་ལེན།). It is especially popular amongst individual tradition-bearers who are interested in doing ecommerce while performing the cultural practices.  

Kuaishou is particularly useful for sharing certain kinds of content. The short-video function of Kuaishou, with its restrictions on the length of the videos, is more suitable for certain traditions that usually run from around a minute to several minutes, such as lu ‘folk songs’ (གླུ།), layi (ལ་ཡེ), formal speeches (བཤད་པ།), and dunglen, while not ideal for longer forms of traditions like Gesar epic performance which could last for hours. However, the live stream function can be used for any type of contents. As for live streaming on these sites, there are two primary formats: the host appearing in front of a camera to perform or playing an existing recording of a performance genre via live streaming, no matter if they are audio or video tracks. The performers or hosts(主播) who livestream not only advertise their products but also compete with other livestreamers for rewards from the audience or followers in the form of kuaibi (快幣) ‘currency the Kuaishou platform’ in each competition session. Followers can purchase kuaibi with WeChat and other online payment methods. The first type is the most common type of livestreaming and tradition-bearers also fall into this type. However, some accounts are dedicated to playing existing recordings of songs, comedic sketches, Gesar epic, and stories.  

Hosts attract followers through either live performance or uploading short videos appealing to audiences. Some hosts attract followers by having feuds with other hosts, but few tradition bearers seem to engage in these sorts of behaviours. Regardless of whether they are Gesar epic bards, folk singers, or other types of performers, after cultivating some audience base from livestreaming, most of them either sell goods or engage in PKing (an expression meaning “to battle” adopted from the gaming community’s term, “Player Killing”) with other performers to gain rewards from the followers. To achieve dramatic effect, competitors agree punishments for the loser, like making them sing different types of songs, doing physical challenges like a certain number of push-ups and squats, or, in extreme cases, make them pour bucket(s) of freezing water over their heads or running half-naked on the street of the freezing winter nights of Tibetan plateau etc. 

Kuaishou hosts can create different kinds of content on their channels, but usually combine segments of livestreaming, competing with other hosts, and uploading videos to their accounts. For instance, Tsultrim Gyatso, a bard from Yushu who posts under the handle of Gesar Epic Recitation (格薩爾史詩說唱) , wearing his ritual hat (see a short video here), tells episodes of the Gesar epic daily for hours as a “dream-inspired story teller” (བབ་སྒྲུང་པ།) bard (on different types of Gesar bards, see Thurston). Individual views come and go, but he regularly has between two and four hundred viewers at any given time. During the performance, he sometimes takes breaks from his recitation to compete with other livestreaming hosts who are also bards from other regions and performers involved in singing songs and telling stories. Like other hosts, he can convert half of the rewards he receives from his followers during the competition into cash, and Kuaishou takes the other half. Therefore, even if he does not sell any products on Kuaishou, he is able to generate some income from PKing with other hosts. He also uploads short videos of himself performing the epic, highlights from his livestreaming, pre-recorded performances, impromptu recordings, and announcements for future performances on his account. For the short videos on Kuaishou, Tibetan pastoralists and farmers upload diverse types of songs, stories, and speeches. Some of these are recorded in original contexts, while others are performed solely for the purpose of recording and uploading. For example, it is common for people nowadays to videotape all the performances at weddings, singing competitions, or a gathering where people sing layi and lu and deliver formal speeches, and some of these recordings get uploaded to their personal accounts on Kuaishou.

Kuaishou is not the only platform available for Tibetans in western China. Though YouTube and other foreign video platforms are banned in China, there are many alternative video service platforms in China such as Bilibili (嗶哩嗶哩), iQiYi (愛奇藝), and Youku (優酷) are known as some of the biggest video hosting services in China. Tibetans can make use of many of these and more. Since early 2010s, Tibetans have occasionally used and still use WeChat Video and WeChat Public Platforms (公眾號) for distributing songs and other expressive culture. There are WeChat Public Platforms where some users are entirely dedicated to uploading existing audio tracks of love songs and other types of songs from cassettes and CDs with a mixture of different performative genres. The same goes for the WeChat video channels. In recent years, however, these platforms are losing audience with competition from platforms live-streaming and short-video hosting platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin (抖音), known outside China as TikTok. Bringing cultural traditions into emerging digital spaces transforms and transmits them. It opens traditions to new audiences and algorithms, breathing new life but also potentially leaving new vulnerabilities as well. Regardless, however, this change is increasingly unavoidable, and studies of cultural vitality and sustainability must take these digital spaces into account.  

Tsering Samdrup is Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the Tibetan Sustainable Heritage Initiative. He completed his PhD at SOAS University of London in 2022, and has written extensively Tibetan linguistics in both historical and contemporary contexts.