Viya introduces products during a livestream show in April. Photos: VCG

Following a two-month disappearance due to tax evasion, Chinese top live streamer Viya's former employees restarted selling products through livestreaming in February, attracting more than 1.75 million followers within two weeks.

The team, which consisted of six people who were previously Viya's assistants or models, released an announcement through a Wechat account on February 14 saying that they will start selling products that day, leading many viewers to speculate as to whether Viya would also be making a return.

The six liverstreamers did not respond to questions about Viya during the livestreaming, noting their new identity as a "small team of entrepreneurs."

According to their Wechat account, the team has no direct relation with Viya's company, Qianxun (Hangzhou) Culture Media Co., despite many followers seeing the development as evidence of Viya's return.

With the support of Viya's fans, during the first livestreaming of, more than 1 million viewers visited the live studio and the team increased 260,000 followers on February 14. Five days later, the number of fans in its live studio exceeded one million and ranked among the top three live studios on Taobao. As of Sunday, the team had more than 1.75 million fans.

On December 20, Huang Wei, nicknamed Viya, was fined 1.34 billion yuan ($210 million) for dodging taxes by the taxation authority in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. The statement revealed that Viya evaded a total of 643 million yuan in taxes and 60 million yuan of other underpayments between 2019 and 2020 by concealing her personal income along with other false tax declarations.

After the penalty was announced, her live studio vanished from the Taobao app, with her official Sina Weibo account and Douyin account being banned later.

Global Times