□ Changjiang Daily reporter Tian Qiaoping
Zhu Dan, who turned 41 in August this year, is 1.58 meters tall and weighs less than 50 kilograms. The driver's bag looks a bit big on her body.
Zhu Dan used to be a female video anchor with 300,000 "fans".
Later, she stopped the broadcast decisively and devoted herself to being a substitute driver.
She said: "Holding the steering wheel, one by one to make money, although it is hard, but the heart is at ease."
■ At the hardest time, one person engaged in 4 jobs
This year is Zhu Dan's seventh year as a substitute driver. She has been somewhat forced to do it from the beginning to her current love.
In 2016, 34-year-old Zhu Dan entered the surrogate driving industry.
This was one of the four jobs she was working at the same time, and she urgently needed to make money to repay the debt she owed for her brother's medical treatment.
In November 2011, my younger brother, who was working in Guangdong, returned to Wuhan for treatment because of a large lump on his right thigh, and stayed at Zhu Dan's home.
It wasn't until 2014, when my younger brother was diagnosed with bone tuberculosis, that the treatment showed results.
The younger brother spent all his savings of 20,000 to 30,000 yuan saved as a painter in Guangdong, and Zhu Dan also owed a large debt to save his life.
The last treatment was completed in the hospital, and the younger brother went home to recuperate.
Zhu Dan didn't have to go to the hospital anymore, and started working hard to make money to pay off his debts.
One day, a friend told her that she could be a substitute driver at night.
At this time, Zhu Dan was already doing three jobs - selling wine, doing micro-business, checking in at a wealth management company, and working as a driver at night was another job to earn money.
As early as September 2011, Zhu Dan got his driver's license.
Now, Zhu Dan drives the "Iveco" that can't be driven by a male driver; Zhu Dan also drives the van with the window glass and no hand brake... Top luxury cars, I have driven all kinds of cars."
A few years ago, there were not as many people looking for substitute drivers as there are now.
When Zhu Dan entered the business, he received cash.
Seeing that the surrogate driver was a thin woman, many people handed over hundred-yuan bills, often asking her not to give change, but giving her as a tip.
"Sometimes, after one night, the tips I received almost caught up with the normal charges." People's acts of kindness not only helped Zhu Dan speed up her debt repayment, but also made her feel the warmth between people.
On the evening of January 14 this year, it snowed heavily in Wuhan.
That day, Zhu Dan's last order was to send a guest from Wuhan Optics Valley to Zhifang Street, Jiangxia District.
At about 10 o'clock that night, Zhu Dan waited for her husband Xia Haibing to pick her up in a car. The owner of a small restaurant on the side of the road invited her to sit and wait in the store: "It's too cold outside, so it's warmer in the store." Zhu Dan said, acting as a substitute driver In the past few years, she has met good people.
■ Being a streamer makes a lot of money makes her uncomfortable
Becoming a video anchor is something Zhu Dan never thought about.
Working in 4 jobs at the same time for more than a year, Zhu Dan's health collapsed.
She quit the other three jobs and only worked as a substitute driver with relatively free time and movement.
Like many women in Wuhan, Zhu Dan is also obsessed with making videos.
She sang lip-sync and took pictures of her daily life.
She uses the video account of "Little Sister Driving" to record her life, "I just do it for fun".
At 9:00 pm on August 15, 2019, after Zhu Dan sent a customer to Yangluo Development Zone, he rode a shared bicycle to the station of Metro Line 21, but the subway was closed.
After she finished calling her husband Xia Haibing and asked him to answer, she said something into her mobile phone: "I missed the last subway, so I had to wait for my husband to pick me up." She casually sent it to her video account.
"This video has become popular, with more than 300,000 views." Why did it become popular?
Zhu Dan has not figured it out until now.
What made her even more unexpected was that on August 16, a staff member of a media company sent her a private message: "Do you want to make money? I can take you to make money." She asked, "What kind of money do you want to make?" The other party said, Make her popular on a certain video platform.
Zhu Dan had never heard of this kind of gameplay, so he hesitated.
The other party invited her to visit the company.
Until the end of September 2019, Zhu Dan took Xia Haibing and three girlfriends to the company in Wuchang.
It turned out that the company was dedicated to discovering and cultivating internet celebrities.
The company positioned Zhu Dan’s live broadcast anchor as “beauty + driver”, and opened 3 accounts, and tried to broadcast them all.
Later, the company sent a special team to shoot videos for Zhu Dan.
Some of the contents in the video are what Zhu Dan encountered in the driving, and then filmed after processing and rehearsal, and some are borrowed from the Internet.
Half an hour to an hour after each video was uploaded to the platform, Zhu Dan started live streaming.
Zhu Dan spends two or three hours live broadcasting in the afternoon, and acts as a driver as usual in the evening.
Sometimes, guests will ask in surprise: "You are really a substitute driver, aren't you here to experience life?" Sometimes Zhu Dan will explain why he wants to be a substitute driver, and sometimes he will not say a word.
The video attracted traffic to Zhu Dan's live broadcast room.
The number of "fans" has increased by thousands and thousands, breaking through 200,000 in about half a year.
The income brought by the live broadcast is much higher than that of surrogate driving, and Zhu Dan feels uneasy about making a lot of money in a short period of time: "I lie at home and can make money just by talking about it. The money comes too fast and too easy."
The main source of Zhu Dan's live broadcast income is the rewards of "fans" swiping gifts.
For these profits, Zhu Dan shares proportionally with the company and the platform.
Zhu Dan understands that in the live broadcast room, her topics are two, one is pretty, and the other is driving.
Driving on behalf of her is a real hard job that she can do well.
In March 2021, Zhu Dan stopped live streaming.
At this time, her "fans" had reached 300,000.
After she stopped the live broadcast, people from the company stopped making videos.
■ In addition to acting as a substitute driver, he also comes to cook for others
In 2021 and 2022, the business volume of the surrogate driving industry will decrease significantly, but there will be more people acting as surrogate drivers.
When the live broadcast was stopped, the people in the company told Zhu Dan that he could come back anytime when he wanted to start the live broadcast again.
But Zhu Dan said: "I don't regret stopping the broadcast, and I won't do live broadcasts again." After stopping the live broadcast, she found another job to cook for others in addition to driving.
She said: "I have endured hardships since I was a child, and now the hardships are not considered hardships. I earn a little hard money one by one, and I feel at ease."
At noon on January 14 this year, Zhu Dan received the first driver of the day at his home near Xudong Street in Wuchang.
After running three orders this afternoon, she went to a community in Fujiapo, Wuchang to cook dinner for someone.
After dinner and helping the family clean up the kitchen, she turned on the driver order receiving system and received several more orders.
Zhu Dan's heart was also filled with the revival of the surrogate driving industry starting from New Year's Day.
She said: "The surrogate driving industry in Wuhan will get better and better. I can earn two to three hundred yuan a day, and I am very satisfied."
Zhu Dan was born in Zhu Chongquwan, Husi Street, Jiangxia District, in August 1982. His mother is deaf and dumb.
When Zhu Dan was 7 years old, her mother, who could not speak or hear, went away with her 2-year-old little sister and never came back.
At the age of 21, Zhu Dan married to the Xia family in Xujiapeng, Wuchang. Her husband Xia Haibing, who is 10 years older than her, gave her enough beauty. She became the first girl in Zhu Chongquwan to get married wearing a white wedding dress and sitting in a car. .
Zhu Dan said that she worked as a substitute driver and came to cook for others in order to earn more money for the family and share the responsibility of supporting the family for her husband.
Zhu Dan's daughter went to college last year, her husband gets a fixed salary as a worker, and her 78-year-old mother-in-law is in good health.
"I'm happier than a lot of people," she said.