David Gulasi
David Gulasi is an Australian social media figure active in China.
Rowan Callick of the Weekend Australian described him as "by far the best-known Australian in the country".[1]
Early biography
He grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney. His family was Turkish Australian. He attended the University of Sydney with a study programme in computers.[1]
He initially worked in sales,[1] and had a career in Mediterranean cuisine.[2] He also previously did standup comedy.[3]
Career
Circa 2011 he moved to Hohhot,[2] and began working at Hohhot No 35 Middle School.[1] The agency he used assigned him to Hohhot even though he was at first to go to Shenyang.[2] Gulasi later established his own training school for adult education,[1] New World Language Training School.[2]
Gulasi had started a social media account with some videos, and before his first major video his follower count was 50. He gained significant social media attention when he posted a video of people making the mistake of using the word "play" to mean to socialize with someone when the word is not natively used in English in this way.[1] Gulasi's follower count was at 5,000 followers at one point, and then to 120,000 24 hours after that.[3] The video with the misuse of "play" was ultimately reblogged 71,100 times and received 29,880 likes and 27,400 comments.[1]
He uses QQ and Sina Weibo,[2] with the latter being his primary point of activity.[1] Millennials are his main audience.[3] He had 5 million followers on the latter by 2017.[3] Later that year his follower count was eight million.[1] By 2019 Gulasi had over 1.7 million followers.[4] Prices for advertising on Gulasi's page reached up to $60,000 U.S. dollars.[3] By 2017 the advertising price was up to $75,000 Australian dollars.[1]
In 2019 Gulasi posted in favor of the swimmer Sun Yang.[4]
In 2020 David worked with Beef ledger to donate 20,000 pieces of Australian beef to those in Wuhan [5]
David was a former standup comedian in Sydney Australia before he decided to go to China [6]
Personal life
He married a woman who he met on QQ; they have a daughter.[2]
See also
- Afu Thomas - German social media figure in China
- Lee and Oli Barrett - British social media figures in China
- Raz Gal-Or - Israeli social media figure in China
- Amy Lyons - Australian social media figure in China
- Winston Sterzel - South African social media figure in China
References
- Callick, Rowan (2017-09-01). [https://web.archive.org/web/20200427182346/https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?asid=4f54e419&id=GALE|A502699121&it=r&p=GPS&sid=GPS&u=wikipedia&v=2.1 "Australian David Gulasi: How 'a clown' became a Chinese megastar"] Check
|url=
value (help). The Australian. - Alternate title: "China's accidental megastar". Available at Pressreader - "David Gulasi". Shine. 2016-03-13. p. A1.
- Liu, Coco (2017-08-21). "How expats are cashing in on China's internet celebrity boom". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- Birtles, Bill (2019-07-23). "Chinese social media abuses Australian swimmer Mack Horton in Sun Yang spat". ABC Australia. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- https://beefledger.io/beefledger-donates-australian-beef-to-the-people-of-wuhan/
- https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2107339/how-expats-are-cashing-chinas-internet-celebrity-boom
Further reading
External links
- "Is this the most famous Australian in China?". The Weekly Times. September 2017. (video)
- "David Gulasi's Weibo profile". ABC Australia. 2016-08-12.