China KOL with 20 million fans accused of sending team to assault man over food claims

An influencer in China known as the combative version of rural-life internet star Li Ziqi has triggered public backlash for selling mislabelled food and letting her team attack the men who exposed it online.

On September 23, two Douyin key opinion leaders (KOL) revealed that Sister Yu, whose account @dongbeiyujie had 22 million followers on the platform, sold tapioca noodles labelled as sweet potato noodles.

Sister Yu dispatched her team to beat them up when they visited her place to protest about their rights as consumers.

Three days later a tearful Sister Yu apologised during a live-stream, saying she had sent the noodles for quality check, and her team’s conflict with the two KOLs got physical because they secretly took videos of them, and demanded 300,000 yuan (US$42,000) in compensation.

Results came out on October 12 confirming the sweet potato noodles she sold on her live-stream had been mislabelled tapioca noodles, and her live-stream sales were “false advertising”.

The administration for market regulation at Benxi city in northeastern China’s Liaoning province fined her company 1.65 million yuan (US$232,000) and suspended its business.