NATURE NOSTALGIA

Food and rural lifestyle video blogger Li Ziqi is trending abroad, having increased her Youtube following from 8 to 10 million subscribers, around a third of whom are based in the US, UK, and Canada, in 2020.

The 30-year-old from Pingwu, Sichuan province, is already famous within China for making ginger tea from roots in her garden, hewing bamboo furniture, dyeing clothing using grape skins, and doing other DIY crafts. Her homespun lifestyle and idyllic cinematography strike a chord with fans who are disillusioned with consumerist society.

“We’ve gotten to a certain point of materialism and consumption where there’s only so much you can buy, and we’re like, ‘What other experiences can I have?’” Linda Qian, a PHD candidate at Oxford researching nostalgia’s role in revitalizing China’s countryside, told The Guardian. In 2017, China’s Ministry of Agriculture estimated that 7 million “entrepreneurs” have returned from cities to start businesses in the countryside, 40 percent of whom have at least high school education.