Spring plowing season always brings a surge of activity to the countryside. Along the ridges, in orchards, at markets, and village entrances, new faces are appearing: some are recording rural daily life with their phones, others are setting up live streams in orchards and kitchens, some are making wheat fields go viral through dance, some are village cadres finding sales channels for local specialties, while others are operating tractors or participating in nighttime crop protection, unlocking new possibilities within traditional rural labor. These young and vibrant rural faces are known as "Star Farmers" on Kuaishou.
On April 28th, the 2026 Kuaishou Star Farmers Festival, themed "Let Creativity Sprout," was held at the Amber Manor in Xiaoshan, Hangzhou. Content creators from the agricultural sector across the country walked the red carpet, bringing a noteworthy rural transformation into the spotlight: short videos, live streaming, e-commerce, and digital tools are enabling a new generation of farmers to express and build their rural communities in novel ways.
For a long time, pursuing education, employment, and development outside their hometowns was a key path for many rural youth seeking to broaden their horizons. Today, as digital platforms penetrate counties and villages, some young people are beginning to see new opportunities for development right at home.
A post-95s couple, "Dongdong and Tingting," from Jingning, Gansu, were initially on the urban path of buying a home, getting married, and finding city jobs. However, facing practical pressures, they chose to return to their hometown and started filming videos of their rural family life. From childcare and cooking to farming, marital interactions, and daily life with in-laws, the most ordinary snippets of life resonated most strongly with their audience. As their account grew, live-streaming e-commerce gradually became their new livelihood. Progressing from their first stream, which generated only 24 yuan in sales, to single-session GMV exceeding 100,000 yuan, their experience demonstrates how short videos and live streaming are offering new work possibilities for ordinary families returning to the countryside.
In Suizhong, Liaoning, "Xiaoshuang Xiangyu's Return to the Village Diary" represents another youthful approach to returning home. Several young women returned to a small courtyard in Northeast China, not simply replicating traditional agricultural content, but weaving together farming, market trips, cooking, harvesting, and live streaming into a lively "Northeast Working Diary." They first built trust through their content, then introduced local agricultural products like apples into their live streams. Their streaming activities also stimulated local employment in sorting, packaging, and other related tasks. Thus, rural content is no longer solely an expression of hard labor but can also be presented in a lighter, more lifestyle-oriented manner.
In rural Jiangsu, the popularity of "White-Haired Uncle" presents a greater contrast. White hair, field ridges, wheat fields, and rapeseed flower fields are common elements in his videos; yet when the camera rolls, he often breaks into dance right in the fields. While many initially remembered him as the "dancing uncle," as his videos spread, viewers also began to see the seasons, scenery, and pastoral daily life of rural Jiangsu. Light entertainment content served as an entry point, providing local rural areas with a new window for visibility.
Behind these stories, the boundaries of rural content are expanding. It is no longer limited to agricultural techniques, product sales, or family routines; it can also be a small stage at the village entrance or fresh news from home. The countryside is no longer just a subject to be recorded but has become a site for content innovation.
More notably, short videos and live streaming are also entering the realms of grassroots governance and rural public services. "Liangliang," a post-00s university graduate and village cadre in Caomiao Township, Pengyang County, Guyuan, Ningxia, uses short videos and live streams as a new window for local products to gain visibility. The area boasts特色 resources like wood carving, paper-cutting, handmade shoes, coarse grains, and free-range chickens, but was often hampered by geographical isolation and sales channels, facing the reality of "good products hidden in the mountains." While Liangliang's follower count isn't exceptionally high, his long-term grassroots work, familiarity with the villagers, and understanding of the products make it easier to build authenticity and trust during his live streams. For him, creating content isn't about "becoming an internet celebrity" but about helping fellow villagers open up another sales channel. In Ningxia, similar grassroots cadre creators are not uncommon. For instance, Zhang Wei, Party Branch Secretary of Yangping Village in Pengyang County, has also promoted his hometown and its agricultural products through short videos and live streams, allowing more people to see the scenery and changes in Northwestern villages. Grassroots cadres stepping in front of the camera does not replace their original work methods but provides an additional way to connect with the outside world and showcase their hometowns alongside their daily services to the community.
The presence of female new-generation farmers is also becoming a significant change in the rural spring. "Sister Mulan Driving the Tractor," from Huadushi Village, Inner Mongolia, is a female agricultural machinery operator. During the spring plowing season, she drives a tractor through the fields, plowing, sowing, and working, skillfully participating in modern agricultural production. Creators focused on public welfare crop protection, represented by accounts like "Female Aircraft Operator of the Outdoor Team," venture into scenes of nighttime patrols, wild boar deterrence, and crop guarding, bringing the often-unseen risks and protective efforts behind agricultural production into the public eye. One is in the tractor cab, the other on nighttime patrol. They show that rural women are no longer confined to a single role. Whether operating tractors, protecting crops at night, or stepping in front of the camera to document rural life and promote goods, female new farmers are actively breaking stereotypes.
The "2025 Kuaishou Agriculture, Rural Areas, and Farmers Ecosystem Data Report" indicates that women account for 63% of new farmer creators on Kuaishou. An increasing number of women are stepping into the fields, in front of live stream cameras, and into industrial chains, becoming a force that cannot be ignored in rural revitalization.
From these cases, it is evident that today's new farmers do not have a single identity. They might be returning couples, rural content teams, field dancers, grassroots cadres, agricultural producers, or public welfare protectors. Their common characteristic is the ability to use digital tools, express rural life, connect with market demands, and the willingness to reintegrate personal development into local contexts. This also explains why "Star Farmers" are becoming important new faces in Kuaishou's agricultural content sphere.
The "2025 Kuaishou Agriculture, Rural Areas, and Farmers Ecosystem Data Report" shows that Kuaishou's new farmer creators increased by 34.2% year-on-year, with the number of authors under 30 years old reaching 84,000; Kuaishou's agricultural authors generated 350 million orders throughout the year, and the number of creators earning over 10,000 yuan monthly grew by 17.9% year-on-year. These figures signify that short videos and live streaming are no longer just windows displaying rural life but are becoming crucial infrastructure for rural employment, agricultural product distribution, and connecting local resources.
From a broader perspective, the emergence of new-generation farmers is changing external perceptions of the countryside. Rural areas are not just idyllic landscapes afar or traditional agricultural production sites. They can host content entrepreneurship, live-streaming e-commerce, grassroots governance, agricultural technical services, local cultural tourism, and new vocational cultivation. For young people, returning home no longer necessarily signifies a fallback option but can be a new starting point for rediscovering career, life, and a sense of belonging.
Of course, short videos and live streaming cannot solve all the challenges of rural development. Issues like agricultural product standardization, supply chain stability, sustained talent retention, and local industrial coordination still require long-term efforts. However, it is certain that as more ordinary people are seen, trusted, and connected, the small variables in rural development will gradually accumulate into new momentum.
After the spring plowing, everything grows. Some seeds fall into the soil, others fall onto screens. For these "Star Farmers," Kuaishou provides not just a stage for display, but a new channel connecting the countryside with the market, and individuals with the times. In the vast countryside, new stories are sprouting.