Videos draw wave of recycling fans

SHIJIAZHUANG－When he started shooting short videos about waste recycling in 2019, Liu Anan never thought he would amass over 15 million followers online.

Liu, from the city of Handan in North China's Hebei province, shares his daily findings at the recycling station－ranging from toys and bottles to the occasional expensive watch and pieces of jade－in his short videos.

Besides showcasing his discoveries, Liu's videos convey the inspiring message of an ordinary man with a humble job who has a confident, upbeat attitude toward life.

"The job of waste recycling can be dirty and tiring, but this is life, an ordinary person's life," the 29-year-old says in one video with more than 1 million views pinned at the top of his Douyin home page. "And it's good to find something unexpected."

Liu's recycling career and online fame both happened unexpectedly.

After graduating from middle school, he worked as a truck driver, a street vendor and a part-time worker before he got into waste recycling in 2019, following in the footsteps of his parents and two uncles, who have been in the business for over 30 years.

However, unlike his elders, who see their job as simply collecting waste, Liu thinks of it more as resource recycling. In his Douyin profile, he jokingly introduces himself as the "CEO and Executive President of Resource Recycling, Greater China".

"It's a process of turning trash into treasure, and in recent years, paper manufacturers have developed a huge demand for waste cartons," Liu said.

As a short-video fan himself, Liu thought he could use videos to share his life as a recycling worker, an occupation quite different from those of many of his peers.

The idea got off to a bumpy start. He gained few views at the beginning and struggled with editing. Sometimes, the videos he made with well-prepared scripts would get fewer views than random shots.

Despite the disappointments, Liu carried on.

"As a young man, I wanted to try something different from my parents' generation," he said.

Gradually, he discovered people liked videos about the interesting items he retrieved from the trash, like jade, necklaces and bits of calligraphy. His followers grew over time, and he became more passionate about his cause.

To give the videos greater appeal, Liu also thought up catchy phrases for his voice-overs. So far, he has more than 200 of them.

"To satisfy my fans, I think I almost turned myself into a poet," he said.

The videos have been well-received.

"I love your videos, they're fun and inspiring," reads one comment on Douyin.

"I hope your positivity reaches everyone who is working hard," reads another comment on Kuaishou, another short-video platform.

Thanks to his growing influence, Liu has helped his hometown promote locally-made ceramics online.

"I'm still young, and I have to continue to try, learn and make breakthroughs myself," Liu said. "Young people should work as hard as possible to achieve their dreams."