Wave Maker | Tiansai Winery's Julie Li: "Play Master" Doesn't Chase Trending or Put on Airs, Turning Wine into Everyday Life

Waving a glass of red wine, Julie Li casually rests one leg on the chair. Sitting in a café in Beijing’s most bustling district, unconcerned with others’ gazes and free of any burdens, she instantly makes it clear why this “natural” young owner can “borrow” wine from neighboring tables and exchange insights at a large roadside stall in an unfamiliar county.

Born in 1993, Julie Li launched the account “Young Owner’s Today’s Wine Awakening” six years ago. At a time when the “factory second generation” and entrepreneurial IPs hadn’t yet flooded the scene, she seized the short video boom’s opportunity. Not only did she elevate Tian Sai Winery in Xinjiang from obscurity to one of the most well-known domestic wineries, but she also completely overturned the traditional mysterious, small-circle marketing narrative of Chinese wine over the past decades.

“People who can grow good grapes are usually steady and conservative. Getting them to play on the internet is somewhat difficult. But domestic wine consumption still hasn’t reached its ceiling—if just 1% of users are willing to drink, that’s enough,” says Julie Li, a graduate in clinical nutrition. She doesn’t promote the benefits of alcohol consumption but recommends the most suitable options when consumers show interest in trying. “Life is only 30,000 days—You Only Live Once. Seeing the ocean, learning to ski, drinking wine—these are all life experiences.”

A team of 10 online staff supports one-third of the winery’s performance: traffic is part of business management

The optimistic Julie Li has a decisive side in business. Before the Spring Festival, due to insufficient freight capacity from Xinjiang to Beijing, Guangzhou, and other places, her e-commerce team struggled to secure supplies because communication was overly polite. Frustrated by delays caused by approvals and procedures, she directly called the owner—her mother—demanding to see the wine in the warehouse by a certain date and time. “Of course, the owner is my mom, but I say that not because of our mother-daughter relationship, but because I have the confidence of Tian Sai’s largest distributor—my e-commerce team of 10 people achieved 30 million yuan in sales last year, accounting for one-third of Tian Sai’s total.”

Starting from zero, her e-commerce business only took five years to develop. Even amid a global decline in alcohol sales and many wine merchants lamenting difficulties in sales, Julie Li’s team achieved impressive results—beginning in 2020 with the “Young Owner’s Today’s Wine Awakening” content account, and entering e-commerce the following year. By 2022, sales reached 16 million yuan, maintaining over 30 million yuan annually for the next three years.

In contrast, several leading wine companies have seen less optimistic performance trends over the past five years, with some alternating profits and losses or experiencing revenue declines starting in 2024.

Julie Li at ProWine Germany

“People’s consumption habits have definitely changed in recent years: they drink less—down from three times a week to two—and alcohol is no longer the only spiritual solace—you can buy LABUBU, raise virtual pets to comfort your spirit,” she says, sitting in a Starbucks at Wantong Center in Beijing, holding a glass of red wine. The AI era has accelerated the decline of offline community concepts. “Today, I went to support a friend’s newly opened bar, bought a drink, and left with a glass. I also often bring wine to local markets and fairs to shoot videos—partly to replace friends who don’t have time to go out and play.”

Now, about half of the videos on the Young Owner’s account feature street food from across China—Julie Li appears relaxed in front of the camera. This post-90s girl with two dimples, eating potato strips and braised pork rice at a rural market stall that costs only 30 yuan, often with a bottle of aged Maotai or a local white liquor. This starkly contrasts with traditional white wine ads depicting successful men at business banquets, creating a strong visual contrast. Yet, these seemingly “nonsensical” street stall videos garner far more traffic than the “serious” content about wine exhibitions, wine tables, or wine science.

Since a Beijing barbecue “dirty stall” video in June 2022, which featured various skewers, candied tomatoes, and a bottle of wine, her content has gone viral—over a million views, three times the reach of other winery visit videos at the same time.

“Nobody wants to be lectured,” Julie Li explains the shift in her account’s content. She believes that people interested in food and drink outnumber those solely interested in drinking wine, and even more than those who focus on wine. As long as her “mini variety show” videos generate enough traffic, they can help niche wines reach a broader audience. “Today, 60% of my live viewers have never tasted Chinese wine.”

But when the funnel is large enough, differing opinions inevitably emerge. Mid-last year, Julie Li posted a video of driving 300 kilometers from Chengdu to Longchang to drink mutton soup. While the street food from an unknown shop didn’t resonate with all viewers, a comment appeared: “Your experience abroad was wasted.”

Julie Li, who rarely interacts in comments, responded promptly: “Studying abroad is to broaden horizons, including not pointing fingers at others without knowing the facts, and not judging others from a position of ignorance. The more I see the outside world, the more I realize how vast the world is, and how different people, cultures, and voices can coexist.”

“I hate all practices that divide people into classes. That comment clearly tries to rank people—like studying abroad is some high-level thing,” she explains a year later when recalling the incident. “I won’t fall into the trap of justifying myself when questioned. But ignoring negative comments doesn’t make them disappear. Only when they receive negative feedback will they likely stop being voiced publicly.”

The “factory second generation” who don’t follow the typical life script often face criticism over their social media content. Good looks, a solid education, simple dance moves, and rustic factory settings once became traffic secrets. Many viewers, just looking for entertainment, leave comments like “Dancing can’t save a business.”

“Doesn’t dancing save a business? Then I might as well dance,” Julie Li says bluntly. Many criticize the second generation for chasing traffic, but traffic itself is essential for business management. “If you see e-commerce as a department store, short videos are meant to showcase how lively the street is. If you open a restaurant alone and no one comes, building a Disneyland in front of it will definitely attract visitors,” she jokes. “You need to find ways to attract people at the mall entrance—whether they dance or not, just don’t be vulgar.”

In her view, the industry’s past tendency to elevate white and red wine to an overly luxurious level is disconnected from everyday life. “It’s just alcohol, meant to serve people. When I eat barbecue, I drink both wine and white liquor. I can, so can you.”

From medical student to winery “player”: using emotion and empathy to restore the equality of wine

Julie Li exudes a relaxed vibe both on and off camera. She recalls that in high school, she was top of her class. She once lost a point on her Chinese exam because she hadn’t read “Water Margin,” leaving a question unanswered. “Actually, I could memorize every annotation of classical texts I studied,” she says. Perhaps her “photographic memory” helped her as a tour guide after graduation. Now, she films videos in unfamiliar cities without scripts, drawing on her knowledge and improvising on the spot.

“The biggest creative bottleneck now is switching between e-commerce and video creation—one is data-driven and very rational, the other is highly emotional, and it’s hard to do both at once,” she explains. So she divides her time equally—half traveling and shooting, half sitting in live streams.

“E-commerce live streams are the most painful because you have to repeat the same script forever. For example, our stream retention is 50 seconds, meaning you have to repeat your spiel like a robot to let new viewers know what I’m doing,” she admits. Compared to the free, unrestrained artistry of making videos, she feels a conflict when returning to sales pitches.

“I’m not someone seeking fame, nor do I like exposure. Making money is more important,” she says frankly. She’s increasingly focusing on e-commerce sales, but her small team of ten doesn’t impose performance targets on the hosts.

“First, I don’t like competition. Second, we interview 20-30 candidates and only hire one. If they’re here, it means I trust them—trust their self-discipline and responsibility to do a good job,” she explains. She compares school exams with clear answers to the workplace, where there are no graders. “What we need is to understand the question of life and find better ways to solve it, not just look for the right answer.”

Unlike many “factory second generation” who plan their lives around “succession,” Julie Li was in a free-range state before officially returning to the winery in 2020.

Because of her interest in biology and chemistry in high school, she chose clinical nutrition for her undergraduate studies. But when she started dealing with real case records in her third year, she was overwhelmed. “I have very strong empathy. Hearing those case recordings was too painful—I told my teacher I couldn’t do it.” After switching to wine studies for her graduate degree, she traveled across Europe alone within a year, exploring new places every weekend, and even worked as a tour guide after graduation.

Once, she visited a medieval church in Italy and was not impressed by its grandeur but thought, “This is the result of exploiting the labor of the lower classes.” Her strong sense of “equality” makes her eager to show the democratization of wine drinking. This preference isn’t just driven by commercial mass-market pricing but also rooted in her childhood.

“Elementary school was very happy; the school rules were strict but emphasized equality,” she recalls. “The principal would greet students at the school gate every morning. Once I was caught chewing gum, and he said, ‘Julie Li, please spit the gum into my hand.’ That was a kind and inclusive way of education, not one based on fear.”

Julie Li, who insists on sharing 50% of her team’s annual profits with her partners, strongly opposes “competition.” “Many people see pain as profound, but pain is just pain—it doesn’t bring anything,” she says. To her, happiness comes from achieving goals one after another. “I don’t think so. Life should be like calculus—you’re happy with every slice. Suffering first, then sweetness, is pointless.”

She recounts a childhood conversation with her mother: “Lili, you play at home every day, now you’re fifth place. If you work harder, can you surpass the others?” She asked her mother, “Why surpass others? What’s the difference between third and fifth?”

This Spring Festival, she visited the God of Wealth and only wrote her mother’s name. “My mom is 58—she’s in her prime!” She shows a photo with her mother on her phone. “Look at her—she can keep going for at least another 30 years. So whenever someone asks if I’ll take over, I say, my mom is still in her best years.”

Epilogue

Mother and daughter work hard in their respective fields. Julie Li, who has traveled across China, never stops moving. On the evening of March 10, after a fast-paced live stream, she set off for Europe to attend a German wine exhibition.

“As in movies, exploring the world is a journey of seeing the heavens, meeting people, and understanding oneself. The more places you go, the more you realize how small individuals are, and the more you can embrace different customs and understand others,” she recently shared in a video about dipping sauces for dumplings. Some comments said, “How can it taste good without sugar or Sichuan pepper?” others said, “Too much seasoning, can’t taste the dumplings.” She also recounted her trip to Inner Mongolia to buy shao mai, where some places weigh by skin, others by filling. “People said I encountered a black shop. But in the same place, customs vary—people just don’t realize the differences between each other.”

“History is full of unpredictable coincidences in individual choices,” she notes. Her favorite book last year was Kangxi’s Red Ticket. It traces Kangxi’s 1716 edict to Europe, focusing on his interactions with Jesuits like Verbiest and Ignatius, revealing how missionaries used astronomy and mathematics as “door openers” into the Qing Palace. For example, Kangxi’s comment on algebra’s “mediocre algorithms” wasn’t out of arrogance but to understand the algebraic texts.

“Historically, writers hoped to craft brilliant narratives, to reveal the underlying trends behind events, much like studying physical phenomena in nature, seeking the laws of historical development,” says author Sun Tianli. “This led historians to focus on grand, abstract history, neglecting individual lives and the randomness and uncertainty in personal trajectories… If we accept that history isn’t abstract but composed of vivid individuals, we should respect personal destinies and the element of chance and unpredictability they bring.”

“This book offers a very different perspective on history,” she says. “China’s thousands of years of history are embedded in different regions, with distinct customs and landscapes—just like wines from different places, each with its own style. I want my friends from Fujian to see life in the northeast, and those from Hebei to experience the local flavor of Hunan.”

“Last year, I visited Wuliangye and Luzhou Laojiao, explored the distillery fields, and tasted freshly distilled 70-degree liquor—it was so fragrant.” She plans to visit Moutai in Guizhou this year. “Young people drinking whiskey don’t complain about the high proof, so the key isn’t lowering the alcohol content in baijiu.”

At this moment, she’s no longer the middle school student who memorized classical annotations word for word. She now records the expressions of strangers who happen to appear on camera.