No Sex Please, Just Cutesy Flirting for China’s Online Hostesses

Student Xue Yueyue, 21, spends four hours most days chatting online with fans who shower her with virtual roses and other presents, which can total hundreds of dollars.

She is one of more than 10,000 hostesses on the internet site bobo.com, a live broadcasting web platform where anyone can record themselves singing, playing piano, dancing or just chatting.

The hostesses are predominantly singers, playing to an audience that is 90 percent male, and mostly between the ages of 20 and 35. Acting cute is okay. Anything explicitly sexual is not.

Xue's speciality is to sajiao – a very Chinese type of flirting characterised by the woman acting in a cutesy childlike manner and speaking in a whiny voice.

In return, users show their appreciation by sending her virtual gifts, which can be worth as much as thousands of yuan.

She explained the relationship between the hostess and the clients.

"It is the internet, which gives people a virtual feeling. We don't know each other, we have made a lot friends online, but we don't know each other, as time goes on there's this indescribable feeling. They really support you, and their support improves your self-esteem," she said.

For 23-year-old client Zhu Peihua, it's all about having someone to talk to.

"This is a real person, I can interact with her, I have someone who keeps me company and talks to me. We talk as friends and we can talk about everything," said the 23-year-old drama teacher.

Zhu said he has spent 6,000 rmb ($970) on bobo.com in the course of the past three to four months.

A hostess like Xue makes anything between a few thousand and more than ten thousand yuan ($1,600) a month getting users like Zhu to send virtual gifts. That pales in comparison with the more than a million yuan ($161,400) given to one hostess on the platform — a record so far.

Xue says most of her friends don't know about her work, as in the eyes of many, the sites are still dominated by borderline erotic content. However, following a series of anti-pornography crackdowns over the past few years, many hostess services have cleaned up their acts.

"We have very strict rules for the users, we have very clear rules about what you can do and what you cannot to, especially for the broadcaster users, we'll even tell them how long the skirts have to be, to the centimetre, we are specific to that extent," said Zuo Ming, head of operations at bobo.com.

For some fans, what can start as a diversion can turn into an obsession.

Wang Dong, 32, began watching the broadcasts when he started working for bobo as a graphic designer. He said the content left him cold at first, but he soon found himself infatuated with one hostess.

"I felt she was quite youthful, and she had such a sweet smile, it was just, every now and again she had this kind of feeling of sincerity, and she sings very well, so I watch her broadcasts every day," he said.

Wang became so obsessed, he began using his spare time to design personalized virtual gifts for her. He even helped her make a professional music video and got to meet her in real life, but a non-virtual relationship never blossomed.

In the end Wang gradually stopped watching her shows.

"Perhaps it's because I feel like reality is better after all, after all online it's all virtual, and she's so far away from you," he said.

In total there are about 50 internet companies in China running video chat services. The platforms typically take between 50 and 70 percent of the money given by users.