The Grace, the Impossibility, and the Mystery of Li Ziqi

What trying to live her lifestyle taught me about her

In 2013 my life in a city collapsed, and I had to return to the countryside. I was shellshocked and devastated by stress-related conditions. Lacking better ideas on what to do, I set up a small vegetable garden and began to grow at least some food on my own. The first two seasons were fantastic, everything grew in abundance, and my body & mind got a chance to heal on natural plant-based foods.

The initial success propelled me into an obsession with nutrition, homesteading, and sustainability. Only later did I start to feel a dissonance; something told me this was not my path entirely. I ought to be an artist, a photographer, and a filmmaker. But how to reconcile those two paths?

Life found a way. On some level, my vibe started to attract clients from the “sustainability sector,” so I got a chance to work on both ends. I began filming people who are restoring their connection with nature, like the one below:

(To brag a little, it is my most-watched film ever. On the client’s Youtube channel, it’s approaching 2M views. After this film, we’ve recorded two full seasons of gardening episodes, then our paths diverged)

Of course, to do that job well, I had to watch a lot of reference material.

And this is how I came across Li Ziqi.

I was immediately hooked. Her estate was everything I hoped mine to be, only better, more cinematic, and romantic to look at. Her videos had this calming quality, and I often watched them before bed to unwind after a hectic day.

I often returned to my favorite episodes and watched them repeatedly with a more critical eye of a filmmaker and a homesteader. Two things became apparent; her grace and the impossibility of what she does.

The Grace

If you tried to work in a garden (or cook in a kitchen, for that matter), you would recognize her skill. Everything she does is well-rehearsed and performed with a grace that takes years of hard work to build. It is apparent to me that she indeed does live this lifestyle. She might be good at acting, but she’s not an actor. Her skill is genuine and graceful.

But at the same time, it is not entirely realistic. If you film these kinds of videos, it is only natural that you want them to look good. You don’t use just regular glasses; you pick the good-looking ones. You dress up and comb your hair. You make unrealistically small servings of food. You mind lighting; you film at absurd hours just because it looks better.

All of this is considered normal for an “influencer” video production, and I have no problem with it as long as we understand it is incompatible with daily rural life.

The Impossibility

After the onset of the current pandemic, I lost most of my client commissions, and again — lacking any better ideas — I began filming myself homesteading the li-ziqi-style.

It was very hard. If I focused on the work I had to do in the garden, I found it hard to film; my mind was set on the work, and my hands were dirty. Another time I organized the work around filming, I treaded the gardening or cooking process as a movie set, but then nothing got done in the garden (or in the kitchen).

Gardening and filming of gardening are not that compatible, and each requires its own mindset and brings about requirements that are often in a collision. Plus, there is the aspect of time consumption; making films alone is a full-time job that can (or must) fill up your entire day.

You can either be one or the other.

(Needless to say, my self-video is still in the cutting room.)

It is obvious Li Ziqi has a filming crew; she’s not hiding it. However, I think she must have help in homesteading too. The estate she shows in her videos is just too good looking to be a result of only one girl who at the same time takes care of an elderly person.

I am currently reading The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, and there’s a passage that illustrates this beautifully:

“There’s the idea of wilderness, and then there’s the unglamorous labor of it, the never-ending grind of securing firewood; bringing in groceries over absurd distances; tending the vegetable garden and maintaining the fences that keep the deer from eating all the vegetables; repairing the generator; remembering to get gas for the generator; composting; running out of water in the summertime; never having enough money because job opportunities in the wilderness are limited; managing the seething resentment of your only child, who doesn’t understand your love of the wilderness and asks every week why you can’t just live in a normal place that isn’t wilderness; etc.”

And all of this is before we factor in the impossibility of self-sustainability.

The Mystery

Her recent disappearance put oil on the fire of these doubts. According to this video:

Actually, she is only a created person. Her video, which shows excellent video and editing skills, has not been done by herself. She was a person who signed an agreement with a production company called The Hangzhou Weining, and the company’s shares are complicatedly distributed. The registered capital was about $6 million we on, and its stake is divided into 22 famous investment companies.

Of course, every person that appears in the media is “created.” It can not be any other way. No one shares their entire life with the camera, it is always just the selected parts, and the viewers’ imagination fills up the rest.

But what I think this source suggests is that her story was directed from the onset, much like the LonelyGirl15 in the early days of the internet was. Which is fine, I guess. She’s not faking that much, and the aesthetic value of the videos compensates for any supposed lack of faithfulness to her real life.

The problem for Li Ziqi apparently started only when things got messy on the political front. Her portrayal of rural life was too romantic and began to cause problems in cities where young people were supposed to work in factories. It is not suitable for capitalism.

A little bit is fine, it can provide entertainment and relaxation, but too much can quickly cause adverse effects.

Was that a reason for her disappearance? Did she cross some line that the government didn’t want her to?

We can only guess.

I tried to live her lifestyle on both ends, as a homesteader and a video creator, and I realized it couldn’t be done. If you want to do it well, you have to let one go and focus on the other. In short, you need a team, and you need investment capital to make stuff look nice. There are no free lunches, are they?

And this, I think, makes her story all the more remarkable. Because even if all of her videos are orchestrated, they still provide inspiration and solace, even to those of us who are aware of the unglamorous truth behind them. We all need that from time to time. We need someone who raises the bar and provides a goal worthy of striving, even if it is set at an impossible level.

But in the end, I just hope she’s fine. I really don’t want to believe she vanished in some whirlpool of corporate and political interests.