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Chinese Mukbang Star Chen Ziyi Dies at 24 After Health Alarm

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Chen Ziyi, the Chinese mukbang creator known as Ganfan Yingying, has died at 24, days after telling fans her potassium had fallen to a dangerous 2.3 mmol/L.

Chen Ziyi, a Chinese online personality who drew a wide audience with her extreme eating videos, died on August 17, 2026, at the age of 24. Her parents confirmed the death, according to reports in Chinese media, but did not release an official medical cause.

The announcement followed by only a few days a video in which Chen, who went by the online name Ganfan Yingying, told viewers she had been admitted to hospital. On August 14 she said her blood potassium reading had slipped to 2.3 mmol/L, far below the level doctors consider safe. Typical laboratory reference ranges put normal potassium at roughly 3.5 to 5.0 mmol/L, though the exact figures differ from one lab to another.

Chen had roughly 1.2 million followers spread across her social media accounts. Her fame rested on mukbang, a style of video in which the host consumes very large quantities of food on camera while chatting with an audience watching in real time. The format first caught on in South Korea before spreading to other countries, including China.

In the same message about her hospital stay, Chen admitted that she had at times forced herself to throw up after big eating sessions, hoping to keep her weight down. That behaviour carries a clear physical danger: frequent vomiting strips the body of potassium and can push it into hypokalemia, the clinical term for critically low potassium.

She had spoken before about the strain of her work. Eating enormous amounts on camera while trying to stay slim, she said, was a constant struggle. That tension surfaced starkly in her last uploads.

Chen closed her final video with a direct appeal to the people who followed her. "Although making money is important, health should always come first," she said. The remark landed with unusual weight once she died so soon afterward.

What the low potassium reading meant

Potassium keeps muscles and the heart working normally, which is why a sharp drop can turn dangerous. When levels fall far enough, the heart can beat irregularly, and severe cases can prove fatal. Repeated vomiting is one of the recognised routes by which the body sheds the mineral in large amounts.

Some accounts of Chen's death pointed to cardiac arrest brought on by her very low potassium as a likely explanation. That link was raised in reporting but was never confirmed by her family, who declined to state a specific reason for her death publicly.

Renewed scrutiny of extreme eating content

Chen's death has reopened debate about the physical cost borne by creators who build audiences around eating to excess. Her parting words suggested she understood how heavily the work was weighing on her body, even as she kept producing it.

She was not the first in the field to suffer serious harm. Pan Xiaoting, another Chinese creator, died in 2024 after reportedly falling ill in the wake of extreme eating livestreams. Her case had already prompted questions about the wisdom of turning oversized meals into a form of entertainment.

For the people who followed Chen, the lasting takeaway from her last video was the plainest part of it: no amount of income or online attention is worth sacrificing one's health.

Chen Ziyi, Ganfan Yingying, mukbang creator death, extreme eating, hypokalemia, low potassium, Chinese social media, Pan Xiaoting

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