Chinese influencer Li Ziqi returned to her social media after over 1,200 days of complete silence, creating a storm of excitement among fans across platforms.
The 34-year-old content creator from China is known for calming videos of her bucolic life in southwestern China’s Sichuan province. Painstakingly detailed, her videos showed Li cooking traditional Chinese dishes from scratch, working on her farm, and creating elaborate handicrafts.
She quickly gathered a huge audience, not just in China but globally. She has over 20 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, rising to become the most popular Chinese-language influencer on the platform.
Li last posted on 14 November 2021, and then disappeared from social media entirely as she reportedly became embroiled in a contract dispute with her agency.
Without warning, just as suddenly as she had left, Li returned with three videos earlier this week.
In the first, she handmakes a beautifully carved lacquer closet to give her grandmother’s broken wardrobe a makeover. In the other, she converts a shed used to store wood into a closet. In the third, she makes herself a dress – but spins and weaves the silk fabric by herself. As always, the videos are set to soothing music and interspersed between Li’s work are shots of scenery in her village.
In two days, her latest video had more than 4.1 million views and over 370,000 likes on YouTube.
“Welcome back, Li Ziqi; the world has missed you,” reads a comment on the video.
LIZIQI POSTING 2 NEW VIDEOS AFTER 3 LONG HARD YEARS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF THE SUN BREAKING THROUGH AND WARMING A FRIGID DESOLATE FROZEN WASTELAND I FEEL LIKE IM BEING ENVELOPED IN A WARM COMFORTING HUG NEVER KỊLL YOURSELF !!!!!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/wNzBZJZ8At
— K ⁷ )) (@KKYULFMz) November 12, 2024
Li, whose name is Li Jiajia, grew in popularity between 2015-2016, as people in China and elsewhere began to discover her idyllic cooking videos. She started sharing videos featuring different parts of her life – videos would show her harvesting crops, quietly embroidering a piece of clothing using traditional Chinese techniques, growing mushrooms, making peach blossom crowns, or hanging up persimmons to dry them.
Her fans, most of whom would spend their days working office jobs, found her videos comforting as they felt that it showed them a simpler and happier life. Even though there were some criticisms aimed at what some viewers called her overly idealised version of country life, fans craved the simplicity of the life she showed. In 2020, a New York Times story called her the “Quarantine Queen” and described her videos as “a dreamy escape, and a lesson in self-reliance”.
when the world needed her most...she came back😭
— zhen huan zhuan yyds❣️甄学家 (@jinchenyyds) November 14, 2024
often imitated, never duplicated - one thing about liziqi, NO ONE does it like her🍃 https://t.co/kMYS73IVA6 pic.twitter.com/xTxFVKM5mY
“She is just enjoying what she does. She is romanticising it, but that life is what we want to see,” Professor Li Jinzhao at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) told CGTN.
The slow and unhurried pace of everything she did coupled with the meticulous filming and production turned her not just into a huge influencer, but also won her the approval of the Chinese government.
In 2018, Li was named a role model for Chinese youth and the Communist party of China dubbed her a “good young netizen”. The following year in September, she won the People’s Choice award from the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2020, state media called her a good influence for promoting traditional Chinese culture all over the world. She has also been called the “vlogger who amazes the world with China’s countryside life” by Xinhua.
Mid-2021, Li stopped posting videos amid a dispute with her agency Hangzhou Weinian Brand Management, the reason for which is unclear. The two parties reportedly reached a settlement at the end of 2022, but Li did not post until this week.
The usually reclusive content creator has turned down numerous interviews despite repeated attempts by several publications to reach her over the years, but did agree to speak to state-run media on her return.
Over the three years she was off the Internet, she said she caught up on her sleep, took up learning the piano, created new handicrafts, and travelled with her grandmother, who makes occasional appearances in Li’s videos.
Describing her lacquer work wardrobe, she said she’d started planning the video last year in spring, and the actual work took her months, even though the video may not show it. The wardrobe is decorated with an auspicious mythological creature named the Qilin, which she chose on purpose as the updated wardrobe was a gift to her grandmother.
“I actually specifically chose a pattern of a Qilin looking back because there is a Chinese saying that a Qilin looking back can dispel all illnesses,” she told Xinhua. “I just hope she can be healthy.”
On whether she plans to continue posting regularly again, Li didn’t sound too certain.
“It’s not that I won’t shoot videos in the future – because I still enjoy sharing some of my life and meaningful cultural things with everyone. However, the timing may be more flexible and I have to wait until I finish the things in my hands before I can say for sure,” she said.
