Imagining another life, Li Ziqi and her "Pastoral"

20/02/2022 Reporter: Yihuan Zhang, Haoxian Zhu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9CfVcXoYh4

Born in 1990 in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, Li Ziqi is a creator of short food videos in mainland China. In 2015, Li Ziqi began filming short food videos, and in November 2016, she gained widespread attention with her short video "Lanzhou Beef Noodles." In 2017, she officially formed a team and founded Li Ziqi's brand. On 1 January 2020, Li Ziqi was selected by the China Women's Daily as " One of the Top 10 Women of 2019". 2 February 2021, Guinness World Records announced that Li Ziqi had set a new record for "Most Subscribed Chinese YouTube Channel" with 14.1 million YouTube subscribers.

(Liziqi’s personal page on YouTube)

Growing up with her grandparents, Li Ziqi was taught basic farming tasks and the preparation of bamboo tools by her grandfather. As a child, Li Ziqi also did carpentry work with her grandfather, cooked with her grandmother, and worked in the fields when the crops were ripe. The food she tasted at that time is one of the best tastes she remembers and has become her inspiration for making it. Many of the things she learned from her grandparents have become essential to her future short video work.

Li Ziqi's videos focus on traditional Chinese cuisine and traditional Chinese handicrafts, including many intangible cultural heritages. As Li Ziqi says, her aim in making these videos is to let the world know about the living Chinese culture. In her video, we can also see countless crops sprouting, flowering and fruiting as the season's change and time passes in the space of just ten minutes. Li Ziqi says that many things are gone after they have passed, and many of her daily shots capture precious moments in nature that are fleeting.

As a farmer, she hopes to revitalize China's rural economy by creating a new type of agricultural economy and promoting the sale of crops and rural specialties through short videos. In terms of cultural heritage, Li Ziqi has spent much time learning from many folk craftspeople about traditional Chinese crafts that are about to be lost, such as "woodblock printing." She also hopes to attract more young people to learn and pass on traditional crafts through her videos.

While many Chinese women struggle with traditional family and married life, Li Ziqi has stepped outside the traditional Chinese gender framework as a 'new type of farmer' and as a short video blogger. Using her own life as material, she has taken on the role of both a cultural inheritor and a purveyor of Chinese culture. Gender is not a barrier to her life choice, and she proposes a new imaginary of women's lives. As she says in a YouTube interview in 2019, "She works hard and makes sense of what she does." In her life and in the videos she makes, it is easy to see that she is more than just presenting herself to viewers as a 'new type of farmer. ‘At the same time, this is what her interview suggests: "She is pursuing her own happiness and filming the life she wants with her videos." Departing from the traditional distribution of functions of the male-dominated woman in Chinese society, she uses her power to support her own economic life. Moreover, this power has become her unique brand of the economy. In her quest to do something meaningful, she has succeeded, and this booming brand economy carries with it the meaning of a positive and inspirational independent woman. So, this brand economy with a personal touch is already a symbol tainted with independent women. The more successful she is, the more influential she is to the video's audience. It influences how Chinese women think about feminism and women's new life.

(Liziqi interviewed in English on YouTube in 2019)

(Liziqi interviewed in English on YouTube in 2019)

Although at this point Li Ziqi was already a notable internet celebrity with millions of followers, she has always claimed to be living in the countryside for the long term, stating that a peaceful and idyllic life in the countryside was the life she wanted. Li Ziqi's achievements are certainly built on the windfall of the short video industry, but more than that, her independence and self-empowerment, her full exploration of life, and closeness to nature have allowed her to break all gender frames live bravely as herself in rural China.