OP-ED: Here’s What’s It Like To Have Internet In Life For A Village Woman

This month I went back to my hometown which was a third-tier city to take the test of my driver license. To get to the training school, I had to transfer to more than one bus, as the school was located at a remote town. Fortunately, my coach’s house was near the school. We could wait for our turn to drive at his house. There was a desktop computer downstairs in the house. With it I started my conversation with his wife.

Complete accessories and softwares

That was a desktop computer assembled by a computer shop, with a webcam, a headset, a set of speakers and a router, complete accessories for online entertainment. The operating system was Windows XP installed by the shop. The overall price of the machines was about 3000 yuan. The coach’s wife said that it was a bit expensive, compared with their neighbor’s one of about 2800 yuan. For residents in towns or counties, that price was acceptable.

I turned to the desktop of the computer, trying to find out what softwares a woman at her 40s would have. The computer shop had installed all the necessary softwares for them, including QQ, QQ Music, Baofeng Yingyin (暴风影音) and TTPlayer (千千静听). I also saw some well-known Chinese web-browsers, Chinese anti-virus softwares and online game clients.

Computers of low price have allowed these folks to have a taste of online life. Their computers are under the control of numerous small computer service shops which installed pirated OSs on them. Hacker groups such as Fanqie Huayuan (番茄花园, literally “Tomato Garden”), Shendu Jishu (深度技术, literally “Deep Technology”) and Yulin Mufeng (雨林木风, literally “Rain Forest Wood Wind”) made profits through producing and selling pirated softwares or pre-installing malicious softwares. It was estimated that thousands of illegal copies of Windows XP were installed each day, and that over 10 million devices in China were installed pirated Windows XP spread by Yulin Mufeng.

While we were talking, a small window popped up, showing information about some software company.

Want to chat, use QQ; want some entertainment, use 9158

If QQ represents Social1.0, Wechat shall represent Social2.0, and the internet users in villages are still at the version one. Most of them chat on QQ. The first thing they do after turning on the computer is to launch and log in QQ and then QQ Music. If they want to play online games, they would just click on QQ Games. For most of the time, they play Dou Dizhu (a card game, literally “Fighting the Landlord”), Sze-chuan Mahjong and snooker. Their children occasionally play “Legends of the Three Kingdoms”, a Chinese card game. Basically, QQ has dominated their time for socializing and leisure.

I noticed that she was playing 9158. That company grew exponentially in just a few years, having an income of 1 billion yuan last year. The users of 9158 include both urban Diaosi (屌丝) and hundreds of thousands of other ordinary internet users. I asked her why she played 9158. Her answer was it was exciting and real there. She liked talking to people from other parts of the country via text, sound and video.

To my surprise, she was a conversationalist. I remembered the annual income of Maimaibao (买卖宝) had also reached over 1 billion, and its users were mainly construction workers, security guards, soldiers and waiters/waitresses in restaurants; people who are low in age, diploma and income, namely “three lows”, and have little access to the desktop computer to try e-shopping.

Recently, there came a saying that “Whoever wins the heart of Diaosi shall win the world” (得屌丝者得天下). The economy of China’s internet is the economy of Diaosi. YY, which has Diaosi users of billions, has gone public in NASDAQ. 9158 is preparing for its own listing. Maimaibao is busy enlarging its Diaosi user base. Diaosi has become the target group every company, whether big or small, yearns for.

Online shopping = Taobao?

The coach’s wife bought stuff three times a month, spending 50 to 120 yuan each time. She usually bought clothes, shoes, make-ups and ornaments. Taobao was the only place where she went. I came up with Jingdong (京东), Dangdang (当当) and Amazon, none of which she had ever heard of. She said to me: ”Isn’t shopping online just Taobao? You can purchase after the stuff arrives there. There is security too. And it is just so fun to flirt with those shopkeepers.”

(Source: huxiu.com)