Dianxi Xiaoge Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Height, Net Worth, Fast Facts

Dianxi Xiaoge lives in a family farm in a small western mountain in the town of Youwang [zh] in Shidian County in Baoshan, Yunnan. It was challenging for her parents to make a living farming in the village, which led her to seek schooling and employment outside her province. Dianxi Xiaoge studied to become a police officer at Sichuan Police College [zh] though upon graduation in 2012 chose to join an Internet startup company in the marketing department. She planned to eventually buy a house in Chongqing and move her parents in so they would all have a better life. But she returned to her village in 2016 after her father had a heart attack. To make a living in Yunnan, Dianxi Xiaoge began selling local specialities online before capitalizing on the rise in 2016 of short videos when she started posting her own. She created her YouTube channel in 2018 and first went viral internationally after releasing a video where she made hamburgers for her grandparents who had never eaten them before.

Scholars have called her a cottagecore content creator and an example of the rural living segment of the Wanghong economy. Dianxi Xiaoge’s videos showcase the calm, idyllic village life and feature her making videos of Yunnan cuisine using produce that she planted, harvested, and raised herself. Her male Alaskan Malamute named Dawang (Chinese: 大王; lit. ‘Big King’) follows her around in many videos. She ends her videos with a family meal of what she cooked. Urban dwellers have viewed her videos as a temporary refuge from the bustling, stressful city life. Coda Media’s Isobel Cockerell said Dianxi Xiaoge’s presence and popularity on YouTube despite the censorship of YouTube in China indicates she has implicit government support. In 2020, she had roughly 16 million subscribers on all her platforms including Sina Weibo, YouTube, Douyin, and Facebook, and her videos each were receiving roughly 20 million views. Her Weibo was among the 10 most subscribed independent accounts that year.

Life and career

Home

Dianxi Xiaoge lives in a family farm in a small western mountain in the town of Youwang [zh] in Shidian County. Her village in which 140 families live is about a one-hour bus ride from Baoshan Yunrui Airport. She lives about a 30-minute drive from the town in the remote mountains where houses including hers are constructed along the hillside. The asphalt road to the houses is filled with numerous turns. Potted plants adorn the ground in front of a row of old-style wooden houses. In her courtyard, she has a pigpen where she raises pigs and a cowshed where she raises cows. A stone bridge with water flowing downwards is at the right of the courtyard. Succulent plants and other kinds of flowers and plants fill up the entire courtyard. The house beams are made of old-style wooden frames. Inside the house, the walls are covered in several old photos, while the floor is made of wood. The farmhouse has a wood-fired stove. The house’s second story has a section where her family stores corn. Her younger male cousin lives in the house next door and in 2019 purchased 300 baby chickens using funds from jobs he did outside the province.

Early life

Dianxi Xiaoge (Chinese: 滇西小哥), whose actual name is Dong Meihua (simplified Chinese: 董梅华; traditional Chinese: 董梅華), was born in 1990 in Shidian County in Baoshan, a prefecture-level city in the southwestern part of China’s Yunnan province which borders Myanmar. In Chinese, “Dian” is for short for Yunnan and “Xi” means “west”. She included the phrase as part of her online name since she lives in the western part of Yunnan. In Chinese, “Xiaoge” means “little brother”. Despite being a woman, she calls herself this since she had been a tomboy as a child. She found “Xiaomei” (Chinese: 小妹) to be too cute, whereas she liked “Xiaoge” for coming across as more playful and carefree. She has had Dianxi Xiaoge as her online name since around 2016. Dianxi Xiaoge also has the nickname Penji (simplified Chinese: 盆鸡; traditional Chinese: 盆雞; lit. ‘Bucket Chicken’), and her viewers call her Apenjie (Chinese: 阿盆姐; lit. ‘Bucket Sister’), mimicking her younger brother (Chinese: 小豪), Xiaohao, who calls her Apenjie in the videos. Her village’s tradition is that when a baby is born, the mother’s family will visit. The newborn will be named by whatever the family brings. Dianxi Xiaoge’s maternal grandmother brought a bucket for cleansing and a chicken, which is why she was given the nickname “Penji” or “Bucket Chicken”.

Her father is Dong Chaoyu. She has a younger sister and a younger brother, Xiaohao. When she had not yet entered primary school, Dianxi Xiaoge’s mother had to wake up early in the morning to hike to the bottom of the mountain to bring back several buckets of springwater since their village did not have running water yet. Although her mother was adept at making all kinds of food, Dianxi Xiaoge was the most excited to eat the laba congee, which they would purchase from the county seat only a few times a year. It was too challenging for her family to subsist on only farming since the mountains were steep and the land was thin. Her parents worked at construction sites in various cities. In her pre-university days, whenever she was not in school, Dianxi Xiaoge would spend time with her parents and her younger sister at the sites. They would see each other during a hastily eaten lunch at the site. Her mother enjoyed cooking and stressed to Dianxi Xiaoge that village girls should know how to cook, so Dianxi Xiaoge and her sister cooked a lot of food from a young age. Her parents raised her and her sister in a traditional household to prepare them to perform household chores when they have their own families.

As a youth who grew up in the mountains, Dianxi Xiaoge had a deep desire to leave her hometown for a city where she would buy property and forge a better life for her family. When filling out her university preferences for the gaokao, she did not choose a single university in Yunnan. Dianxi Xiaoge attended the Sichuan Police College [zh]. She participated in rescue efforts during the August 14, 2010, landslide in Yingxiu. The public security bureau of Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture awarded her with a third-class Meritorious Service Medal for her rescue work.^[4] Dianxi Xiaoge was riding a bus in 2011 when it suddenly burst into flames. After she helped rescue people on the bus, the Sichuan Public Security Bureau [zh] gave her a second-class Meritorious Service Medal. The Luzhou city government in 2012 gave her the “Luzhou City acting bravely for a just cause warrior” award and the “Luzhou City Jiangyang District acting bravely for a just cause citizen” award. That year, the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League of China [zh] gave her the “Outstanding Communist Youth League Member of Sichuan Province” award. While in college, she received monetary awards from the commendations for her actions during two rescue operations.^[ Throughout her four years of college, she did not request funds from her family for her expenses since they were covered by her monetary awards.

Career

Dianxi Xiaoge graduated from Sichuan Police College in 2012 after which she sent her resume to provinces other than Yunnan since she had no interest in going home. Although her major was in becoming a police officer, she did not do any police work after graduation. She instead secured a marketing role at an Internet startup company, where she worked for over four years, and worked various jobs afterwards. Her goal was to buy a house in Chongqing and move her parents into the house to be with her. Her plans changed after her father had a heart attack in 2016 and needed to undergo an operation to insert a coronary stent. He would have to continue taking medicine for the rest of his life after the operation and could no longer do arduous work After she learned that her father had become ill, Dianxi Xiaoge realized that she had too few memories of her parents. Keen to not have any regrets and treasuring being with family the most above all else, Dianxi Xiaoge returned in 2016 to Shidian County to the mountain she had left to be with her family after having been away for eight years for schooling and work.

Daily Habits

Facebook, Instagram & Twitter

Net Worth

The Estimated Net worth is $80K – USD $85k.