Former Hong Kong model and TV star’s viral anime food videos are ‘a chance to be myself’
When Covid halted Lukian Wang’s acting career, she returned to Hong Kong and started making cooking videos based on anime dishes
The pandemic years may have caused former model and TVB star Lukian Wang Bao-bao to lose acting work in mainland China, but it also brought her back to Hong Kong, where she reclaimed the time and freedom to rediscover her true passion: food-related content creation.
“I was stuck at home with nothing much to do, so I thought I’d make some videos on Facebook,” says Wang. “I grew up watching so much anime, and I’ve always liked food. So, when I watch anime, I really notice the food.
“The idea to do anime-inspired cooking content came from TikTok. There was a girl who remade Disney food, which I thought was really cute, but I watch more anime than Disney, so I decided to do Studio Ghibli instead.”
In May 2020, one of the first clips she posted on her “Cooking BoBo” Facebook page was of her making instant noodles inspired by a scene from Hayao Miyazaki’s 2008 anime Ponyo. At the time, her average view count was “around 50,000”, she tells the Post, but one morning she woke up to find her Ponyo video having garnered over 2 million views.
“I’d never encountered something going viral, so I was really shocked,” she says. “It wasn’t the best quality – I shot it with my iPhone and it was really simple, just making instant noodles.
“Then I made another video, [inspired by Studio Ghibli’s 1986 film] Castle in the Sky. I made a fried egg on toast. That one got, like, 5 million views in two days. When that happened, I just started repeating it, and it became my life during Covid and ended up paying for all my bills.”