Chinese grandmas just want to have fun

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For the foodie rapping grannies who live in a village near Beijing, the videos started as a way to pass the time during the pandemic. “It was just having fun and messing around,” said Wang Shuping. When Ms. Wang’s son, Ren Jixin, came to visit over a Lunar New Year holiday, he thought he could help the women polish their act.

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In the music videos by Sister Wang Is Coming, Ms. Guo and her friends run around in fields, playing pranks on one another, or lie in the grass and daydream. They rap about their love of cooking and eating. It’s a world away from the daily routines they once had as mothers and wives with children to raise and husbands to feed. “Times are changing,” said Lin Wei, 67, another Glamma and a former nurse who vowed to stay active in her old age. “We need to keep up with society and integrate into it.”

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“It exercises our brain,” Ms. Guo said of the content they create. There’s money in it, too. Through their Douyin account, Sister Wang Is Coming make about $1,400 a month. It’s not enough to live on, but as their fan base grows, they have generated more interest from companies that want to advertise with them. For Glamma Beijing, streaming is much more lucrative. They can make more than $115,000 from advertising and sales commissions with just a handful of livestreams. In one such event in August, the four grandmothers sat by a lake in a Beijing park and talked about their youth as 21,000 people watched online. But success can have its challenges. Some older influencers in the country are managed by talent agencies that impose grueling quotas and demand their clients hawk products and brands. Fans can be fickle, and social media platforms like Douyin can bombard users with channels more focused on selling products than telling a good story.

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