Country Dad: My Daughter Helps Me Gain Fans Online

Lin Yi is an ordinary stay-at-home dad, thirty years old, living in seclusion in a mountain village with his four-year-old daughter.

He might be ordinary, but his daughter, Lin Tangtang, certainly isn’t: she can talk to animals. Not in the pseudo-scientific “guess what your pet is thinking” sense. She can really talk to them. A sika deer carries her all over the mountains, a clouded leopard purrs at her feet, and even the village’s fiercest big white goose lowers its head and gives in when it sees her.

Lin Yi casually films a few videos and posts them online. They look like this:

· “My Daughter’s New Friend” (starring a wild sika deer)

· “The Village Bully Goose Surrenders” (starring the goose feared by the whole village)

· “A Clouded Leopard Came to My House for a Meal” (starring a haughty king of the forest)

Overnight, the “Mountain Sugar Tangtang” livestream becomes a hit. Tens of millions of viewers call themselves “virtual parents,” tuning in every day to watch Tangtang call roll, hold meetings, and make breakfast for the animals. The animals become stars in their own right, too: Huahua the clouded leopard is a haughty queen, Wukong the golden snub-nosed monkey is a habitual jam thief, and General Goose is Tangtang’s top bodyguard…

Life goes on peacefully like this, until one day.

A woman claiming to be “a volunteer here on vacation” knocks on Lin Yi’s door. Tangtang eagerly takes her hand and introduces her to all her animal friends. Then she looks up and asks innocently, “Auntie, do you know my mommy? Mommy says she sings and flies in the sky, so she can’t come home very often.”

She doesn’t know that the “volunteer auntie” before her is the person who has been flying in the sky for the past five years.

Her mother.

The international music superstar, Alice.