In a rundown villa on the outskirts of Shenzhen sits Naomi “SexyCyborg” Wu’s apartment workshop. Surrounded by a half-dozen 3D printers, two laser cutters and an industrial milling machine, her workstation is something she could only dream about four years ago.

But it’s all been made possible by the success of the English-language videos the 27-year-old shoots for her almost 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube, be it tech reviews, DIY projects or 360-degree immersive videos of her life in Shenzhen, the hi-tech city in China’s southern Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong.