A screengrab from Daniel Wu’s videos and comments about the HK-based American celebrity.
Judy Cui
Hong Kong-based American actor Daniel Wu Neh-tsu has garnered significant attention from mainland fans after launching his online course “Daniel Wu Teaches English,” which has generated sales of 5 million yuan (HK$5.35 million) within five days.
The course, priced at 398 yuan, consists of 84 short videos featuring Wu teaching daily oral English used in 35 life scenarios, such as grocery shopping or hotel check-ins.
Wu even leveraged the popularity of the film Ne Zha 2 by translating two lines from the movie in a promotional video posted on the social media platform Xiaohongshu.
Launched on the Gaotu mobile app and Yashi app, the course also allows users to practice oral English through one-on-one dialogues with Wu’s voice, which is generated by artificial intelligence through DeepSeek.
Reports said the e-learning product achieved sales of 2 million yuan within two days, while mainland media Lanjing News reported that sales exceeded 5 million yuan within five days.
According to Tianyancha, a search platform focused on business enterprises, Wu holds a 90 percent share in a communications company registered in Shanghai, which is also a major stakeholder of the course developer, Yashi App.
The product’s social media account claims that Wu is one of the leaders of Yashi Education.
Many mainlanders said the price for learning English with the “attractive” and “handsome” star is reasonable, while adding that the interactive course is easy to complete and at the same time enjoyable.
However, some have told a Beijing-based media outlet that Wu only appears for five minutes in each lesson and that the course takes advantage of Wu’s reputation for promotion.
Riding on the success, users on second-hand trade platforms are starting to sell videos of Wu’s English courses for as low as 1 yuan. Some even said the price includes future updates of the courses.
The platforms said most of them sold the courses from 3.60 yuan to 8.80 yuan.
A mainland media site said it bought one of the courses for 0.99 yuan and was sent a link to a cloud drive with seven videos, which it said were blurry phone screen recordings.
Mainland lawyers also reminded sellers might be in breach of copyright laws and may face three years’ imprisonment or a 2 million yuan penalty.
