On the afternoon of November 12, Li Ziqi, a short video creator of traditional culture, released her latest work on the entire network and officially returned to the public eye. It is reported that since 2015, Li Ziqi has entered the public eye through short video creation and quickly accumulated tens of millions of fans. In 2016, she entered the public eye with a bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles. Later, countless popular videos promoting traditional culture, the record holder of “the most subscribed YouTube Chinese channel”, “the top ten female figures in 2019”, and the white moonlight in the hearts of countless netizens. Even though it has been 3 years and 2 months since the suspension, the number of fans on Youtube has not decreased but increased.
See Also: Li Ziqi Youtube Channel
In the three years since Li Ziqi disappeared, various top Internet celebrities have changed one after another, but only under her account, there are always many fans who have been waiting for her to return.
She is like a clear stream in the online world. Watching her videos is like creating a paradise for netizens, where there are all kinds of traditional food and exquisite handicrafts of various shapes. Watching her videos can always make people unconsciously quiet down, experience the joy of slow-paced pastoral life in the fast-paced life, and own a “holiday villa” on the Internet without leaving home.
CCTV News once commented on her like this: “Without passion, you can’t become Li Ziqi, and without passion, you can’t understand Li Ziqi.” Many foreigners understand Li Ziqi’s passion, which also explains why many of Li Ziqi’s works are still popular all over the world without translation. There is not a word in her works that praises China, but she tells Chinese culture and Chinese stories well. She spreads the excellent traditional Chinese culture and gives foreigners a clearer understanding of Chinese culture.
Li Ziqi once said: “Someone in my world gave me a beam of light, so I remember this beam of light and want to pass this warmth to more people.” I look forward to her return, with this beam of light in her heart, to illuminate her way forward. While this beam of light shines on her, it will also enter the hearts of more people, and the tranquility and beauty can also warm many people.
Why do people like Li Ziqi?
①
The beauty of the countryside is like a clear and distant flute, which always sounds on moonlit nights. Li Ziqi’s short videos capture the beauty of the countryside and return the distance to the countryside.
Her short videos are full of Chinese rural aesthetics and stretch the pastoral life. People here get a glimpse of an ideal life and encounter the beautiful yearning of “facing the sea, spring flowers blooming”. Small courtyards, crops, bamboo forests, wild flowers and other rural scenery make the daily morning and evening of the countryside beautiful. Li Ziqi salvages the beauty of the countryside. In the camera, the four seasons of Sichuan mountain villages flow, hard work, and three meals a day quietly. Dressed in traditional costumes, she picks spring flowers and autumn fruits on the country roads, or walks in the snow to find plums, showing the beautiful countryside.
Her short videos make homesickness like a tree without annual rings, never aging. Whether it is full of fireworks or simple and sincere, Li Ziqi’s short videos have captured the “roots” of the countryside. She uses contemporary audio-visual language to show the real lives of thousands of people who have been born and raised here for thousands of years, and activates the nostalgia in the details of life. Flower cakes are made on the Qixi Festival, moon cakes are made on the Mid-Autumn Festival, and at the end of the year, red lanterns are made, window flowers are cut, and preserved meat is made. Relatives reunite and drink a little. The poetic sentiment of “every festival makes people miss their relatives more” triggers emotional resonance. Her works have brought the rural cultural symbols hidden in people’s cultural memory back to the public’s vision, making the appearance of the hometown from a vague melancholy to a clear one, and healing the nostalgia.
Her short videos salvage the 24 solar terms of rural life and record the twelve hours of life. The spring rain is a spring and clear valley day, the summer is full of grain and the summer heat is connected… The 24 solar terms embody the wisdom of the ancients to coexist harmoniously with nature. Li Ziqi’s works follow the farming season and illuminate the flowing solar terms. The spring is bright and it is the right time to pick flowers. Add flour and a flower cake to retain the spring light. In the hot summer, cherries hang on the trees, and they are washed and fermented to make delicious fruit wine, leaving behind the secrets of summer. In autumn, red persimmons are ripe, peeled and roasted, and the sweet taste is the memory of autumn. In winter, wipe off the white frost, pick cabbage and pickle it, and the home-cooked dishes are full of the satisfaction of rural life.
“Get up early in the morning to clean up the wasteland, and return home with a hoe under the moonlight.” Li Ziqi takes netizens to encounter the simplicity, reality and nature of rural life, allowing people to glimpse that life itself is an art, and everyone can find poetry in daily life.
②
Creating pastoral songs in cyberspace has been a hot track on the Internet in recent years. The intangible cultural heritage elements that run through all aspects of food, clothing, housing and transportation are undoubtedly the finishing touch of this Chinese lifestyle aesthetics.
In the award speech for the 2021 “China Intangible Cultural Heritage Person of the Year”, Li Ziqi was evaluated as follows: “In the countryside and mountain streams, she tells the Chinese story of the four seasons with the images of each meal in the green spring and yellow autumn. In brewing and embroidery, she allows people living all over the world to feel the Chinese wisdom of intangible cultural heritage in the inheritance practice.”
When intangible cultural heritage meets Li Ziqi, it can be said to be a mutual achievement. With their respective “slow pace”, they have achieved a series of phenomenal “big hits”.
Behind the poetic “pastoral song”, the long and splendid Chinese civilization is the foundation. In the poetic Chinese countryside, there is a moral tradition of gentleness, courtesy, frugality and modesty between people, an ecological concept of harmonious coexistence between people and nature, and a cultural heritage of “farming and reading are passed down from generation to generation, and poetry and books are passed down from generation to generation”… These may just be the inadvertent but moving transitions in Li Ziqi’s short videos.
The crystallization of the hard work and wisdom of the Chinese nation for thousands of years has achieved a cultural “talent” beyond the video. Whether it is the bright and lively Shu embroidery, or the elegant and beautiful movable type printing, whether it is the ancient method of making salt, the king of all flavors, or the ancient method of brewing soy sauce that stimulates the taste buds… We see the meaning of harmony between the intangible cultural heritage skills and the land that nourishes them. And this kind of harmonious beauty between scenery, skills, labor and people may be the most moving part of “Pastoral Idyll”.
Enthusiasm and patience “reproduction” make the Internet generation’s perception of tradition more intuitive, comprehensive and specific. For example, we may be accustomed to silk quilts, but when Li Ziqi started to show the production process of silk quilts from silkworm breeding, the processes involved in raising silkworms, boiling cocoons, peeling cocoons, pulling nets, stacking nets, and beating refreshed the cognition of netizens. Using the raw materials that are readily available around, after a series of processing and transformation processes, one by one, they are made into items that are both practical and aesthetic… Li Ziqi opened the behind-the-scenes of intangible cultural heritage to netizens for “visiting”, which makes people sigh and admire the careful observation and bold association of the ancients to life.
In the days before her comeback, Li Ziqi kept moving. In March this year, Wang Fawan, the inheritor of wood movable type printing in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, said in an interview that Li Ziqi often communicated with him; and in July this year, a photo of Li Ziqi standing in front of the Ancient Shu Shu Brocade Research Institute in Chengdu raised netizens’ expectations for Li Ziqi’s new work. In the new video released on November 12, she focused the camera on every step of lacquerware polishing and coloring, showing the ingenuity behind the intangible cultural heritage.
③
Starting from Sichuan, China opened a beautiful window to the world, allowing people to see the fireworks life and the beautiful countryside, which is a sample worthy of study in foreign cultural communication.
Here is an ancient, poetic and beautiful China. When showing the world the life of the East, perhaps there is no need to repeat the curious route that many people tend to follow. It might be a good idea to use elegance as a clue to restore the elegance of the flowing wine cups and winding waters. In this tranquility and poetry, perhaps people think of Li Bai’s China and Du Fu’s China.
In the elegance of historical culture, the beauty of life wisdom is precipitated. There may be barriers in many aspects, such as lifestyle and cultural background, between Chinese intangible cultural heritage and global netizens, but by breaking through these barriers through the language of the lens, we can extract a common aesthetic experience across mountains and seas.
In addition to traffic, Chinese youth are thriving. In an era of eagerness to “cash in”, there is such a clear stream on the Internet, calming down, bending down, learning skills, and improving skills. This attitude of “not being unable, but not doing” shows the new look and new power of Chinese youth.