Student Q&A: Salisa Vajrabhaya, Thai social media influencer and avid China traveler

Salisa Vajrabhaya: "I want to leverage my media literacy, and I think that it is really important nowadays to be proficient in media usage because it can bring a lot of opportunities."

Salisa Vajrabhaya is a first-year Global Business Journalism student from Bangkok, Thailand. She earned her bachelor's degree from the International Business School Suzhou of the Xi'an Jiao Tong Liverpool University in Suzhou. She speaks four languages — Thai, English, French and Chinese —and has run a tutoring business for five years preparing students for the IELTS examination while building a loyal social media audience, primarily on TikTok.

Salisa was interviewed by Kyoka Ishii, an exchange student from Japan.

Q: Why did you want to study in GBJ at Tsinghua?

A: I am really really passionate about languages. I also am passionate about business. Because my family does business and I look up to my dad a lot, I like to observe business trends, so I love both business and language. So when I heard about the GBJ program, it is Global Business Journalism, so I kind of felt like it is the merger between language and business, which are both the fields that I am

most passionate about.

I think studying business alone will not take me anywhere. Good businessmen or good businesspersons have to also have communication skill in order to spread their knowledge and insight to the world, so I think being a business journalist can bring my specialty and bring my knowledge out there to the world to inform people.

Q: What is your dream job?

A: I love multimedia. I earn money from multimedia. In my life, I have taught hundreds of students because I teach classes of thirty people. Being here in China I opened a website. Students

can buy my course from online and then learn without live interaction with me.

Q: You have a sizable social media following in Thailand and beyond. Are you a social media influencer?

A: I do not know whether I should call myself influencer or not. I do not know what is the definition of

influencer: someone who has a lot of views, someone who has a lot of followers or anything, but I do

not think I “influence.” I am more like inspire people to study and also to find work-life balance to be

productive and to fight for your future. That is what my content is about. I mostly produce content

about being productive, trying to go out there, finding new opportunities, how to learn languages

faster, the tips to learn languages and tips to be happy about what you do. It is more like inspiring. I do

not accept or sponsor beauty programs or anything. I will advertise some box if I think it is nice.

Q: What can you tell us about the power of social media algorithms?

A: I still want to learn more about my audience because I think the algorithm of TikTok is very amazing. If you know your audience, the algorithm will support you and also send your content out there and you can gain a lot of views from that. I think positioning on TikTok is very important, but I have some problems with that because the first three of my TikTok [videos were] purely about teaching English, TikTok categorizes me as someone who is very educational and very informative, so that is what the algorithm sees me as.

Q: Where do you want to take these skills you have learned?

A: I want to leverage my media literacy, and I think that it is really important nowadays to be proficient in media usage because it can bring a lot of opportunities. For me I am a simple person and I like to simplify things. My favorite social media is TikTok. Because I think I have a short attention span, but

it is not completely a bad thing. I think having a short attention span make me simplify things. I like to make complicated formation easier so other people can understand. When I teach on TikTok I try to simplify all of my teachings to make it easier.

Q: Asking about life in China: What Chinese food do you like most?

A: I like a lot but if I have to choose, I might go with the most simple dishes which is 番茄炒蛋. This is

tomato fried with egg and you can also find that in the canteen. But on fancy day I also like BBQ like

烧烤, for example 东北烧烤 the most. I also like hotpot during the winters.

Q: What do you like to do for fun?

A: I am from Thailand, and we do not have winter at all. I was very very afraid of cold winter. Two years ago, I challenged myself. I went to Harbin which is very, very cold. It is like minus 27 degrees. I thought I would die but I did not die. I never thought totally cold that much. It turned out to be fun. It encouraged me to be more adventurous and to open to new things even though I am afraid.

I really enjoy traveling and have traveled to 17 cities in China. I go everywhere!

• Beijing

• Shanghai

• Suzhou

• Hangzhou

• Nanjing

• Changzhou

• Wuxi

• Yangzhou

• Zhengzhou

• Xuzhou

• Guangzhou

• Harbin

• Shenyang

• Changchun

• Hohhot

• Tianjin

• Qinhuangdao

I also love ice cream. 蜜雪冰城 is my favorite ice cream.