What happened to Li Ziqi? Popular Chinese farm life phenomenon suddenly returns after 3-year hiatus

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Chinese influencer Li Ziqi returned to social media after more than 1,200 days of silence, creating a storm of excitement among fans across the platforms.

The 34-year-old Chinese content creator is known for her soothing videos depicting her idyllic life in southwestern China’s Sichuan province. His meticulously detailed videos showed Li cooking traditional Chinese dishes from scratch, working on his farm, and creating elaborate crafts.

In a short time, it has gathered a huge audience not only in China but around the world. He has over 20 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, making him the most popular Chinese influencer on the platform.

Li last posted on November 14, 2021, and completely disappeared from social media as he was reportedly involved in a contract dispute with his agency.

Without warning, just as suddenly as he left, Li returned with three videos earlier this week.

In the first, she handcrafts a beautifully carved lacquer cabinet to revitalize her grandmother’s broken wardrobe. In the other, he transforms the shed used to store wood into a closet. In the third time, she makes a dress for herself, but spins and weaves the silk fabric herself. As always, the videos are set to relaxing music and Li’s work is interspersed with landscape shots of his village.

His latest video received more than 4.1 million views and more than 370,000 likes on YouTube in two days.

“Welcome back, Li Ziqi; the world missed you,” a comment on the video reads.

Named Li Jiajia, Li’s popularity soared between 2015 and 2016 as people in China and elsewhere discovered his amazing cooking videos. He started sharing videos depicting different parts of his life; The videos showed her harvesting crops, quietly embroidering a garment using traditional Chinese techniques, growing mushrooms, making peach blossom crowns, or hanging persimmons to dry.

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Fans, who spend most of their days working office jobs, found his videos soothing as they felt that they showed them a simpler and happier life. While there was some criticism of what some viewers called an overly idealized version of country life, fans craved the simplicity of the life it showed. one in 2020 New York Times Story called her the “Quarantine Queen” and described her videos as “a dreamy escape and a lesson in self-reliance.”

“He enjoys what he does. “He romanticizes it, but what we want to see is life,” said Professor Li Jinzhao of Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU). CGTN.

The slow, unhurried pace of everything he does, combined with meticulous filming and production, has not only turned him into a major influencer, but has also earned him the approval of the Chinese government.

In 2018, Li was named a role model for Chinese youth, and the Communist Party of China called him a “good young netizen”. In September the following year, he won the People’s Choice award from the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In 2020, state media described him as a good influence in promoting traditional Chinese culture all over the world. He is also called “the vlogger who surprised the world with China’s rural life.” xinhua.

Li stopped posting videos in mid-2021 following an unspecified dispute with his agency, Hangzhou Weinian Brand Management. The two parties were reported to have reached an agreement by the end of 2022, but Li did not post until this week.

The often reclusive content creator turned down numerous interviews despite repeated attempts by various publications to reach him over the years, but agreed to speak to state-run media upon his return.

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During the three years he was away from the internet, he said he fell asleep, started learning the piano, created new crafts and traveled with his grandmother, who occasionally appears in Li’s videos.

While describing her work wardrobe, Lake said that she started planning the video in the spring of last year, and although it is not visible in the video, the actual work took months. The wardrobe is adorned with an auspicious mythological creature called Qilin, which he purposely chose because the updated wardrobe was a gift to his grandmother.

“I actually specifically chose the Qilin model of looking back because there is a Chinese saying that looking back can eliminate all diseases,” he said. xinhua. “I hope he can be healthy.”

Li didn’t seem too sure if he planned to continue posting regularly.

“It doesn’t mean I won’t make videos in the future; because I still enjoy sharing parts of my life and meaningful cultural things with everyone. “But the timing could be more flexible and I have to wait until I finish what I have to say anything definitive,” he said.