Li Ziqi is back! Popular Chinese farm life influencer returns after three-year hiatus

Chinese influencer Li Ziqi returned to her social media aft implicit 1,200 days of implicit silence, creating a tempest of excitement among fans crossed platforms.

The 34-year-old content creator from China is known for calming videos of her bucolic beingness successful southwestern China’s Sichuan province. Painstakingly detailed, her videos showed Li cooking accepted Chinese dishes from scratch, moving connected her farm, and creating elaborate handicrafts.

She rapidly gathered a immense audience, not conscionable successful China but globally. She has implicit 20 cardinal subscribers connected her YouTube channel, rising to go the astir fashionable Chinese-language influencer connected the platform.

Li past posted connected 14 November 2021, and past disappeared from societal media wholly arsenic she reportedly became embroiled successful a declaration quality with her agency.

Without warning, conscionable arsenic abruptly arsenic she had left, Li returned with 3 videos earlier this week.

In the first, she handmakes a beautifully carved lacquer closet to springiness her grandmother’s breached wardrobe a makeover. In the other, she converts a shed utilized to store wood into a closet. In the third, she makes herself a formal – but spins and weaves the silk cloth by herself. As always, the videos are acceptable to soothing euphony and interspersed betwixt Li’s enactment are shots of scenery successful her village.

In 2 days, her latest video had much than 4.1 cardinal views and implicit 370,000 likes connected YouTube.

“Welcome back, Li Ziqi; the satellite has missed you,” reads a remark connected the video.

Li, whose sanction is Li Jiajia, grew successful popularity betwixt 2015-2016, arsenic radical successful China and elsewhere began to observe her idyllic cooking videos. She started sharing videos featuring antithetic parts of her beingness – videos would amusement her harvesting crops, softly embroidering a portion of covering utilizing accepted Chinese techniques, increasing mushrooms, making peach blossom crowns, oregon hanging up persimmons to adust them.

Her fans, astir of whom would walk their days moving bureau jobs, recovered her videos comforting arsenic they felt that it showed them a simpler and happier life. Even though determination were immoderate criticisms aimed astatine what immoderate viewers called her overly idealised mentation of state life, fans craved the simplicity of the beingness she showed. In 2020, a New York Times communicative called her the “Quarantine Queen” and described her videos arsenic “a dreamy escape, and a acquisition successful self-reliance”.

“She is conscionable enjoying what she does. She is romanticising it, but that beingness is what we privation to see,” Professor Li Jinzhao astatine Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) told CGTN.

The dilatory and unhurried gait of everything she did coupled with the meticulous filming and accumulation turned her not conscionable into a immense influencer, but besides won her the support of the Chinese government.

In 2018, Li was named a relation exemplary for Chinese younker and the Communist enactment of China dubbed her a “good young netizen”. The pursuing twelvemonth successful September, she won the People’s Choice grant from the People’s Daily, the authoritative paper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2020, authorities media called her a bully power for promoting accepted Chinese civilization each implicit the world. She has besides been called the “vlogger who amazes the satellite with China’s countryside life” by Xinhua.

Mid-2021, Li stopped posting videos amid a quality with her bureau Hangzhou Weinian Brand Management, the crushed for which is unclear. The 2 parties reportedly reached a colony astatine the extremity of 2022, but Li did not station until this week.

The usually reclusive contented creator has turned down galore interviews contempt repeated attempts by respective publications to scope her implicit the years, but did hold to talk to state-run media connected her return.

Over the 3 years she was disconnected the Internet, she said she caught up connected her sleep, took up learning the piano, created caller handicrafts, and travelled with her grandmother, who makes occasional appearances successful Li’s videos.

Describing her lacquer enactment wardrobe, she said she’d started readying the video past twelvemonth successful spring, and the existent enactment took her months, adjacent though the video whitethorn not amusement it. The wardrobe is decorated with an auspicious mythological carnal named the Qilin, which she chose connected intent arsenic the updated wardrobe was a acquisition to her grandmother.

“I really specifically chose a signifier of a Qilin looking backmost due to the fact that determination is simply a Chinese saying that a Qilin looking backmost tin dispel each illnesses,” she told Xinhua. “I conscionable anticipation she tin beryllium healthy.”

On whether she plans to proceed posting regularly again, Li didn’t dependable excessively certain.

“It’s not that I won’t sprout videos successful the aboriginal – due to the fact that I inactive bask sharing immoderate of my beingness and meaningful taste things with everyone. However, the timing whitethorn beryllium much flexible and I person to hold until I decorativeness the things successful my hands earlier I tin accidental for sure,” she said.