BREAKDOWNS · Pro PLAYBOOK
THE CREDENTIALS (public record): East Buy (Dongfang Zhenxuan) is New Oriental's live-commerce arm, launched December 28, 2021 after China's education crackdown destroyed the company's core business overnight. For nearly six months it went nowhere — per Caixin, before June 8, 2022 it wasn't even in Douyin's sales top 100. Then, on June 9, host Dong Yuhui's bilingual, literature-dense selling style caught the algorithm, and within a month the account passed 20 million followers. The fiscal year ending May 2023: revenue ¥4.5 billion (up 401.9% year over year), net profit ¥971 million versus a ¥534 million loss the prior year, live-commerce GMV of ¥10 billion and 136 million paid orders (company filings via Caixin). The parent company, renamed East Buy Holdings, is listed in Hong Kong. This breakdown explains the breakout — and why it was unrepeatable by copying the surface.
WHAT THEY DID: Dong Yuhui sold goods the way he used to teach English — a salmon fillet came with a geography lesson, a bag of rice came with a poem. The now-famous moment: selling a ¥15 steak by lecturing on how to order it in a restaurant, in English, unprompted, while the product sat quietly on screen. Streams ran long — three to four hours — with product pitches deliberately diluted by teaching segments. The ratio was roughly 50/50 content to selling, sometimes more content.
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