Long before it became a career, Jiu’er was simply documenting what was around her.
Born and raised in southern China, Jiu’er, whose name is Yingying Yang, came to New York in 2018 to study Economics at New York university. She later completed a master’s degree in Risk Management at Columbia University.
Her early posts came naturally from student life: classes, restaurants, shopping, travel, and the small differences she noticed while adjusting to life in the United States. Over roughly 6 years, that habit of documenting everyday life grew into an audience of more than 2 million followers across her major platforms. Her work has since expanded into travel, fashion, lifestyle, consumer culture, and collaborations with brands including Lancôme, Estée Lauder, and Shiseido. Through it all, her experience between China and the United States has remained a constant part of how she sees and creates content.
We spoke with Jiu’er about starting out in New York, building an audience over time, the realities of making lifestyle content, and what she wants to explore next.
HBZVN: You first started documenting your life while studying in New York. What were those years like, and how did content become part of your life?
JIU’ER: I came to New York in 2018 to study Economics at New York University. At the time, I really wasn’t thinking about content creation as a career.
I was adjusting to a new country, going to school, exploring the city, finding restaurants, shopping, traveling when I could, and noticing all these little things that felt different from what I had grown up with in China. I naturally wanted to document them.
Some of my early content was about New York breakfast guides, restaurant guides, and international student life. These were very ordinary parts of my life, but I started realizing that they could feel completely new to someone watching from somewhere else. New York really taught me to pay attention to everyday details. That is still a big part of how I create now.
HBZVN: When did you realize that what you were posting was becoming something much bigger than personal documentation?
JIU’ER: The pandemic was probably the clearest turning point. I started documenting more of my life during the pandemic, including moving, returning to China, and going through quarantine, and those videos reached far beyond the audience I had at the time.
One that I remember especially clearly was the video of my move from New York to Pennsylvania during the pandemic. It was published in January 2022 and reached around 4.071 million views. I hadn’t made it thinking it would become a big video. It was just something I was actually experiencing. After that, I started paying more attention to why certain stories connected with people, what they saved, what they talked about, and what made them want to keep watching.
It still happened gradually. There was never one moment when I decided this was suddenly going to be my career. I just kept creating, and over time it became one.
HBZVN: Lifestyle content is a crowded space. What do you think has helped your work stand out and build such a loyal audience?
JIU’ER: Timing was definitely part of it.
I started creating when lifestyle content on platforms like Xiaohongshu was still developing. Starting relatively early gave me time to grow with the platform and build a steady audience. A lot of people who followed me in the earlier years are still there now, even though my content has changed over time. I also think maintaining an audience is harder than getting someone’s attention once.
After doing this for 6 years, I have a much better understanding of what people actually care about. Not only what gets views, but what they save, what they ask me about later, and what kinds of stories they come back for.
Most of my content still comes from things that are genuinely part of my life, where I travel, what I buy, what I eat, or something I notice that day. I care about the visuals, pacing, and how a story is structured, but I don’t want it to feel overly produced. I think having that long-term audience base, together with years of experience understanding the platforms, has made the biggest difference.
HBZVN: Your experience in the U.S. has been part of your content from the beginning. How has living between China and the United States shaped the way you see your audience?
JIU’ER: I think it gives me a slightly different perspective. When I was living in New York, I wasn’t visiting for a week and presenting the city from the outside. I was actually going to school here, taking the subway, grocery shopping, finding restaurants, traveling around the U.S., and figuring out everyday life.
Some of my early U.S.-based content included “A Complete Record of My New York Move” and a China vs. U.S. convenience store comparison, one of which unexpectedly garnered over 1 million views. Things that became completely normal to me could still be interesting to someone watching from China.
That still affects the way I create today. The same place, product, or trend can feel very different depending on who is looking at it. I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes something interesting in one cultural context and how that story might connect with people somewhere else.
HBZVN: As your audience grew, how did your relationships with brands evolve?
JIU’ER: At the beginning, collaborations felt much more like individual projects. Over time, I started working with more established brands, including Emirates, SK-II, HR (Helena Rubinstein), Kinder, and Apple. Some of those relationships also developed into repeat or longer-term collaborations.
When a brand comes back several times, the relationship changes. They already understand my audience and the way I communicate, and I have a better understanding of how the brand can fit naturally into my content. I still think the content has to work as content first. I never want the product to suddenly become the main character. If people would not want to watch something without the commercial element, then the collaboration probably has not been integrated naturally enough.
The best partnerships are the ones where the brand fits into a story I would genuinely want to tell anyway.
HBZVN: Your work started with student life in New York and has since grown into something much broader. As you look ahead, what kinds of projects or collaborations feel like the natural next step?
JIU’ER: I want to keep expanding the work I’m already doing, especially around lifestyle, travel, fashion, and consumer culture. I’d also like to spend more time creating in the U.S. New York was such an important part of the beginning for me, and even now I feel like there is always something new to notice here, whether it is a new brand, neighborhood, restaurant, or cultural trend. Going forward, I’d like to work more closely with American brands and creative companies, particularly lifestyle and home brands, and explore projects involving tech and travel.
I also see a lot of potential in projects that connect American brands with Chinese-speaking audiences. Having lived in both environments, I understand that the same message does not always work in the same way across different markets. I don’t really see it as moving my career from one place to another. My work has always existed between different places and cultures.
For me, the next step is to build more of that work in the U.S. and take it to a larger scale. It feels natural because, in many ways, this is where the whole thing started.
Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam
