Huang Fei made a name for herself back in 2010, as China's first plus-size model. Six years ago, she recorded another breakthrough, when she founded the country’s first plus-size modeling agency, in Guangzhou. 

Today, Huang employs 45 plus-size models, male and female, local and international. However, many of them are not models in the traditional sense of the word; they have abandoned the catwalk and the photoshoot in exchange for a secluded room and a smartphone. 

They are livestream models. They showcase various outfits for viewers who can buy the clothes in real time from the online store linked to the account. It's a relatively new business model, but one that is catching on fast in Chinese cyberspace. 

Man Li is one of Huang Fei's live-streaming models. 

The 21-year-old spends around six hours a day trying on clothes in front of an audience that can grow to as many as 200 people at a time. She rattles off details about fabrics, fits, cuts and sizes at a breathtaking speed, talking non-stop for hours on end. However, the most challenging aspect of the job is not physical exhaustion, but the emotional stress. 

"My heart is drained," Man Li said.

"For example, there's the cyberbullying. If I wear shorts and a vest, it often happens that people will leave comments calling me fat and ugly and telling me to take the outfit off as it makes me look chubby, and asking me why on earth I'm standing there, selling clothes. I've encountered this sort of cyberbullying quite often. However, I can't insult them or talk back. I just tell them, in an indirect way, not to watch my live streams," she added.

To date, Man Li's live streams have racked up a total of 140,000 views – a result she has achieved after just a year. That she has endured for so long in this high-pressure job, is largely due to the support of her mother, Bao Hanying, who owns her own fashion business. 

"I'm a super-fan," Bao said. "But I usually tease her during her live streams and she gets angry."

"She knew little about selling clothes initially. While she was doing a live stream, I'd text her about materials, styles and patterns. I taught her to express herself, for example, what material is this?  What pattern is this? What sort of figure is it suited to? I've got experience in this field and I texted her on Wechat for a whole year."

Working as a model has made Man Li more confident. It has also gained her a social circle of other plus-size models who understand what she has been through. Mother and daughter both have painful memories of how Man Li suffered at school, due to her size. 

"Because of her figure, Man Li was bullied at school," Bao said.

"She was always bullied by the other students, especially at high school. So, she stopped studying properly. Before the university entrance exam she told me she wouldn't apply to the Xinghai Conservatory of Music, as the students there were beautiful and slim. We had a row, and she almost ran away from home because of it," she explained.

Mother and daughter are both aware that modeling is a career with only a limited period. With an eye to the future, the enterprising pair are working together on a plus-size clothing line to be named after Man Li.