Zeit bites: allure of ancient crafts

Why is it so soothing to watch someone make blusher from scratch?

I don’t know, but I could watch Chinese YouTube star Li Ziqi harvest, cook and dry apple blossoms to do just that, and many other traditional Chinese crafts, for hours. I’m not alone. More than three million people subscribe to her channel to watch her lead the most charming pastoral life in the rural Sichuan region of China.

Li Ziqi lives with her grandmother and a rag-tag troop of small dogs, goats, and chickens. She has a killer kitchen garden and culinary skills to match, and can make a complete bamboo dining suite in one 15 -minute clip. Her carefully constructed, technology-free life is utterly mesmerising.

Each of her short, beautifully produced clips is like escaping into a romantic version of China’s past, where the pressures and pace of modern, urban living simply do not exist. Yet even luxuries like wrapped sweets, five-course banquets, the perfect tool for any job – she usually makes what she needs from scratch – handmade shoes are easily attainable, if you slow down long enough to learn how.

I love all of her clips, but my favourites include the one where she dresses like an elven queen and makes her own makeup, the one where she prepares a full banquet of traditional Chinese food for nana, the one where she hand makes her nana’s shoes from scratch – glue and all – and, best of all, the one where she saves thousands of dollars on chic bamboo furniture by harvesting and joining an entire suite by hand in one afternoon.

For a more macho take on the simple life, there’s YouTube’s Primitive Technology featuring John Plant, who, in far north Queensland, hand makes Stone-Age tools and builds increasingly complex and robust lean-tos and huts using ancient skills.

There’s also YouTube’s Primitive Survival Skills, where two Cambodian chaps build water filtration systems, swimming pools, underground homes, Roman-style temples, and hot water systems with stout sticks and their bare hands.