Andong

Andong is a popular food YouTuber.

He has more than 600 thousand subscribers on his YouTube channel by the name My Name Is Andong.

Andong is also a podcaster.

Introduction-

Arseny Knaifel (Andong) was born on 3 June 1988 in Saint Petersburg, Soviet Union (now Russia).

Later, he moved to Germany and grew up in Berlin, Germany.

Andong has a Russian Jewish ethnicity.

Love for Japan & China-

While studying in high school, Andong loved watching Dragon Ball and thanks to this, he developed a passion for Japanese culture and later for Chinese culture.

Later, he travelled to China to join the University of International Business and Economics (Beijing) and enrolled in Chinese Studies.

An interesting fact- Anming is a popular YouTuber interested in Chinese and Japanese cultures.

A job thanks to YouTube-

Andong started his YouTube channel by the name My Name Is Andong on 13 April 2009.

From 2010, he started publishing short films and Chinese rap videos onto his channel.

At that time, Andong was studying in China and used to produce rap videos along with his friends.

His rap videos went viral in China and accrued millions of views on Youku, a Chinese online video platform.

At the time of graduating from the university, a Chinese ad agency stumbled upon Andong’s videos and offered him a job of operating in-house video production in Shanghai.

Thanks to this job, he learnt video production which later helped him in the success of his YouTube channel.

After working in this job for a year, Andong returned to Germany in 2013 and he, along with his three friends, started a small video production agency.

Even after returning to Germany, he made a few rap videos related to China for a while.

Discovering his passion for food-

While living in China, Andong was amazed by the diverse and interesting Chinese food and thanks to this, he fell in love with food.

He lived in China for three years and during his time in China, he travelled the country and explored Chinese food.

Andong learned to eat spicy food in China and his favourite dish has been Chinese fried rice.

Later, as he moved to Germany, he started missing the delicious Chinese dishes and was disappointed by the lack of authentic and tasty Chinese dishes in Berlin restaurants.

So, Andong started learning cooking with the help of YouTube videos and cookbooks and through trial and error and later, expanded into other cuisines.

He never received any formal training in cooking and never went to a culinary school nor worked in a restaurant but thanks to practice, he eventually became better at cooking.

His inspirations & becoming a full-time YouTuber-

Since 2018, Andong has been publishing cooking videos onto his YouTube channel.

Four years after starting his video production agency, even though his company was doing great, he realised that it wasn’t for him and so, he sold his shares.

And took a break and spent a summer hanging out, travelling and watching a lot of YouTube videos.

YouTubers, Elle Mills of ElleOfTheMills, Alex and Andrew Huang inspired Andong to seriously work on his YouTube channel.

The money that he had from selling his shares and his video production experience helped him while working on his YouTube channel.

Later, in addition to working on his channel, Andong also started doing freelance videography projects but eventually he became a full-time YouTuber.

In one of his YouTube videos, he collaborated with Ethan Chlebowski, a popular American food YouTuber.

A successful YouTuber & his book-

Now, Andong is a successful YouTuber.

As of December 2022, he has 663K subscribers on his My Name Is Andong YouTube channel.

Andong earns from a variety of sources like advertisements on his YouTube videos, receiving sponsorships, affiliate marketing and he also accepts donations on Patreon.

He has a small team for helping him with his YouTube channel and uses Notion in his research process and team work.

On 14 February 2023, Andong is going to publish his book titled- Kitchen Passport: Feed Your Wanderlust with 85 Recipes from a Traveling Foodie.

This book is available for pre-ordering on Amazon.

Andong along with another food content creator, Per Meurling, runs a podcast by the name IMBISS 3000 on contemporary food and snack culture in Germany.

He also has a website.

The story behind the name Andong-

He felt that people would find it difficult to type his real name Arseny Anton Knaifel on the internet.

While in China, people started calling his middle name Anton as Andong and he guessed that people could easily type Andong and so he named his YouTube channel as My Name Is Andong.

Personal life-

Andong hasn’t revealed much of his personal life except in one of his 2019 YouTube videos that he has a girlfriend.

He has dual citizenship.

Some interesting facts about Andong-

• Andong loves playing guitar and producing music.
• Chocolate cake and lemon cake are his favourite desserts but he loves savouries more than sweets.
• Andong is a polyglot as he knows Russian, English, German and Chinese and he is also learning Korean.
• He loves monosodium glutamate and cumin is his favourite spice.
• Andong loves travelling and middle eastern and Turkish food.
• He loves listening to podcasts and credits good ideas to listening to a variety of podcasts.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Andong?

Share with me in the comment section below.