Profile | What happened to China ‘Lipstick King’ Li Jiaqi, now in comeback bid after eyebrow pencil row
Top live-streamer, once adored by tens of millions of followers, gets a mixed reception as he returns to limelight
Top mainland e-commerce live-streamer, Li Jiaqi, dubbed the “Lipstick King” is back under the spotlight after appearing in the country’s popular reality singing show Call Me by Fire.
The 32-year-old influencer’s attempt at a comeback, following a series of controversial public outbursts and a formal investigation, has received a mixed reception.
Li’s decade-long journey from cosmetics salesman in a second-tier city to China’s top influencer with hundreds of millions of followers and on to television stardom, was tainted by controversy.
In 2016, the former L’Oréal beauty adviser from Nanchang in eastern China’s Jiangxi province, stood out in a competition held by the beauty brand and multi-channel network company MeiOne.
Soon after, he became an e-commerce live-streamer in Shanghai.
Li shot to fame as the “Lipstick King” in 2018, after he sold 15,000 lipsticks in five minutes, winning a contest against Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba which owns the South China Morning Post.
