A funny way to fortune

Wang Xiaoying/China Daily

Venture capital is constantly scouting for new opportunities and a budding comedienne whose cottage industry of producing and posting video clips of one-woman sketches has proven that a laughing matter can be serious business as well.

I had never heard of Papi Sauce until the news broke that she got an infusion of 12 million yuan ($1.85 million) in venture capital. Reports put her value at 300 million yuan.

Papi Sauce is the online handle of Jiang Yilei, a 29-year-old graduate student at the Central Academy of Drama. She has produced, starred in and released dozens of short videos in which she plays a variety of characters and lampoons things like dating rituals.

On Sina Weibo, she has amassed 6 million followers; Youku has registered a total of 26 million views for 31 of her skits; many of her videos have got millions of clicks and thousands of praiseful messages, including WeChat rewards that range from 2 to 166 yuan, from each of thousands of admirers.

And Jiang's star emerged just in October 2015, which means it took only half a year to mint what many are calling "the first Internet celebrity of 2016". In Chinese, "sauce" is a homonym of "Jiang", her surname.

What distinguishes her from other Internet starlets－who, by the way, are mushrooming all over cyberspace－is her comedic thrust.

Although she touts herself as "a combination of beauty and talent", it is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and is part of her comedic persona. She is studying to be a director at the famed school and without the talent part she may not be able to stand out in a large crowd of oval-shaped faces.

Others who use video to achieve fame or notoriety tend to be bombshells or peddlers of beauty tips or computer-game know-how. Some verge on striptease and other forms of titillation or profit from offline trades of suspicious services.

As a comedienne Jiang has great potential.