@samuelszuchan: In 2021, a 14-year-old diver from China won Olympic gold and told reporters she hoped to earn money for her mother's medical bills. That same night, livestreamers descended on the yard outside her family's home. The diver's name is Quan Hongchan. After winning the 10-meter platform event in Tokyo, she said that her mother was sick, that she herself didn't even know how to say the name of the illness, and that she hoped to make a lot of money to cure her. Her family farmed sugarcane in a village in southern China. A few years earlier, her mother had been hit by a car on her way to work cooking at a factory, and the family was getting about $460 a month in government assistance. Her answer was all over Chinese social media. She was still in Japan, so her family's house was the closest people could get to her. In China, livestreamers make money off the people who tune in to watch them, taking tips and selling products on the streams. Setting up a stream outside her family's front gate was a way to get those viewers. Outsiders packed several rows deep around the house. Some people who were stopped at the door snuck up to the second floor to continue filming. Her father said people were still screaming outside at 3 a.m., and some people camped at the gate for three days. The streamers filmed the poverty that she had mentioned: the run-down alley behind the house, her grandmother at the gate, the mud on her father's pants. A local seafood company came to offer her father 200,000 yuan, or about $31,000, asking him to hold some flowers and pose for a photo. He agreed but turned down the money. "A photo is fine. Take the money away first. I don't want money," he said. He said he couldn't cash in on his daughter's honor. The disturbance ended on the fourth day after a national newspaper criticized the livestreamers. Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, removed 3,287 videos, and the village placed a table at the entrance to the village to block outsiders. For three days, no one was responsible for keeping the streamers away from that gate. So the strangers outside cashed in on the house, and the family inside, who had to live in the house, refused the money.

Sam Szuchan

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Region: US

Monday 26 October 2026 00:00:00 GMT