A Qingdao ointment seller scripted a mini-drama where the product cured blocked meridians

Komanqi Trading (青岛科曼奇商贸) sold a topical ointment through livestream shopping channels. Rather than list ingredients or file for a medical claim, the company scripted a short fictional drama for its livestream ads: a character in pain, the ointment applied, relief following as the story's resolution — with the product credited on-screen with unblocking the body's meridians, a traditional-medicine claim no ordinary topical product is licensed to make.

The format mattered as much as the claim. A testimonial ad reads as marketing and a viewer discounts it accordingly; a mini-drama reads as a story, and a story's ending — the pain relieved — lands as a fact the plot demonstrated rather than a claim the seller asserted. Regulators had flagged the same structure in traditional-medicine-adjacent products before: dramatize the cure so the audience never has to evaluate the sentence 'this product unblocks your meridians' as a sentence.

Qingdao's market regulator fined Komanqi ¥100,000 in March 2025 for the fictionalized medical claim, one of five livestream-commerce cases the national market regulator circulated that spring as examples of tactics under active enforcement.