After graduating from university, Huyen, born in 1997, left her home town in Tra Vinh for HCM City to work. But later she realized that the urban life did not suit her.

She returned to her hometown and took a job in a company with an income high enough to cover her living expenses. She was happy as she could live near her parents and have a stable job.

When the pandemic broke out, she had to stay off work. During the time, she accessed social networks and watched short videos for fun.

One day, she realized that people who live far from home like to watch short videos featuring life in their hometowns. So she decided to build a TikTok channel of her own, producing videos about her homeland.

Huyen posts short videos introducing delicious fruits and food, showing traditional dishes which bear the typical characteristics of the Mekong Delta. Her videos, showing plain people and landscapes, were applauded. More and more people signed up for her channel to watch videos about their hometowns.

In 2021, when her TikTok channel became better known, Huyen decided to quit her job and focus on content creation. 

Her decision was not supported by her parents, who were worried about about her future. However, Huyen did not give up. She tried to persuade her parents to agree and made every effort to build the channel.

Huyen began reaping fruit after a short time with professional high-quality videos. With the first achievements, she became persistent with her work.

She said support from her parents, relatives and husband played a very important role in her success.

Now Huyen is running Huyen Phi TikTok channel with 2 million followers and 68 million likes.

In 2023, Huyen, who has become an influential content creator, was invited to the Bac Giang provincial OCOP (one commune, one product) Fair Program. As a well known TikToker, she helped popularize litchis, the specialty in her locality, and sell the products on TikTok. 

This helped Huyen become more experienced in livestreaming to sell goods, which brought high income. During livestreams, Huyen, who understands the hard work of farmers, tells stories about how farmers create high-quality farm produce. She vowed to become a fellow traveler with farmers, helping them introduce their produce.

Besides the livestream to sell litchis in Bac Giang, Huyen has held many other livestreams to boost farm produce sales. 

She helped sell durian in Lam Dong, OCOP products in Dong Thap, and salangane nests in Can Gio. She often cooperates with petty merchants in Ben Thanh Market in HCM City to sell products.

Most recently, she appeared on a livestream introducing OCOP in An Giang province. In the livestreams, Huyen relates stories about how farmers can create products meeting OCOP standards.

With her stories, Huyen wants consumers not only to enjoy OCOP but also love and respect the great efforts made by farmers to make clean produce.

She feels happy when farmers tell her that their products have become better known after her livestreams and sell better via TikTok than through traditional channels.

“I am happy as I can help farmers distribute high-quality produce,” she said.

As Huyen has a good income, she built a spacious house to turn her parents’ dream of having a home into reality.

In the past, Huyen and her parents had to live in a very small house and had to take a bath and wash clothes in her grandmother’s house. The most difficult days are over, and Huyen now is thinking about developing more products to create jobs for people in her homeland.

Ha Nguyen