{"id":571,"date":"2020-02-28T15:52:47","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T15:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/food-experience\/?p=571"},"modified":"2020-02-28T15:52:47","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T15:52:47","slug":"professor-yang-li-ziqi-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/food-experience\/2020\/02\/28\/professor-yang-li-ziqi-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Yang- Li Ziqi Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Podcast<\/strong><\/p>\n

Podcast Transcript:<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re listening to The Reflecting Pod with Hannah Findling, coming to you in February 2020 from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.\u00a0 Today\u2019s episode will feature my reflections on a presentation given in my food studies capstone seminar.\u00a0 Last week in class, Dickinson College\u2019s Professor of Chinese Language and Literature Rae Yang visited to discuss the popular Chinese social media influencer Li Ziqi.<\/p>\n

Li Ziqi is a 29 year old woman from Sichuan province in rural China.\u00a0 She rose to internet popularity in 2016 when she began posting her beautifully shot and edited start-to-finish videos of her life.\u00a0 She posts regularly across social media and has over 22 million followers on Weibo and another 8.3 million on YouTube, despite the website\u2019s officially blocked status in China.<\/p>\n

Professor Yang showed our class one of Li Ziqi\u2019s videos, in which she prepares multiple recipes featuring tender bamboo shoots, fermented long beans, and other salad-type dishes. The video was incredibly well shot, and showcased a life lush with color, nature, and beauty.\u00a0 As we were watching, Professor Yang also made note of the fact that Li Ziqi cooks on a stove which she built herself, in another video series where she builds furniture using the raw natural materials in her rural surroundings.\u00a0 In other videos, she weaves her own cloth, dyes it using fruit skins, and crafts it lovingly into a tunic, all backed by a relaxing score of flute music.<\/p>\n

The tranquility and idyllic rural lifestyle portrayed in Li Ziqi\u2019s videos is undeniably enviable.\u00a0 I would give anything to spend my afternoons harvesting perfectly ripe home-grown produce for my meals instead of spending them in the library studying.\u00a0 The other students in the class expressed similar sentiments, with Professor Yang agreeing.<\/p>\n

Li Ziqi has attained more than social media following and was named a \u201cgood young netizen\u201d by the Communist party of China in 2018 and was honored by People\u2019s Daily with a People\u2019s Choice award in September of 2019.\u00a0 The Chinese government has praised Li Ziqi as well, commending her display of Chinese culture and traditional values.<\/p>\n

Professor Yang then went on to explain that while a large part of her viewers love Li Ziqi\u2019s videos and long for a simpler rural life, critics have posed that Li Ziqi does not represent China as it really is.<\/p>\n

In reality, 40% of China\u2019s population live in rural areas, many of whom live lives of hard<\/p>\n

Agricultural labor and cope with the effects of environmental damage and pollution which spreads from the large cities.\u00a0 Many Chinese youth have migrated to cities to seek lucrative employment, and have suffered from burnout, high levels of pollution, and an extreme cost of living in order to support their aging family members who remain in rural China.<\/p>\n

In reflecting on the discussion Professor Yang facilitated in class and on what I had learned about Li Ziqi, I returned home and dug a bit deeper into this mysterious figure\u2019s online presence.\u00a0 I watched more of her videos and explored her many fan accounts.\u00a0 One of the most interesting things I found during my search was an article published by the Marketing division of the Robert H. Smith School of Business.\u00a0 In this article, Li Ziqi is said to portray the kind of image of China that someone like Martha Stewart portrays of the United States.\u00a0 The authenticity portrayed by both of these cooking icons is undeniable and conveys images of a simpler life in which one can afford the time and energy to prepare unique multi-course meals.\u00a0 However, just as Martha Stewart does not accurately portray the American working class, Li Ziqi does not reflect the reality of life in China.<\/p>\n

Li Ziqi\u2019s work serves as an incredible form of soft propaganda for the Chinese government. \u00a0She showcases an idyllic life in the bamboo-forested countryside and embodies Chinese values of family heritage and portrays examples of the traditional methods of food preparation and harvesting.\u00a0 Both domestically in China and abroad, her videos cultivate a longing for a deeper connection with nature and a distancing from the clamor of modern life.\u00a0 Without, or perhaps with, intention, Li Ziqi has cultivated a perfect image of China- but has left out the reality of the environment in which she operates.<\/p>\n

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Professor Yang for sharing her time and knowledge with us, and would like to thank you, the listener.\u00a0 This has been another episode of the Reflecting Pod with Hannah Findling, signing off from Dickinson College here in Carlisle, PA<\/p>\n

References and More:<\/strong><\/p>\n