Who is Li Ziqi? For 7 million watchers on YouTube and 20 million micro bloggers on Sina Weibo, that's an easy question to answer. She holds an account on each of the two platforms, and uploads her videos about the detailed cooking processes of various kinds of traditional Chinese food.
Li is a craftsperson in a rural area of Southwest China's Sichuan province. Different from others, she is fond of showing the whole process from the field to the table. For example, in her video about spicy tofu, she starts with harvesting the soy beans, grinding them into powder and making tofu, and then cooks it. Her works also include building a homemade oven to bake bread.
Like the rest of us, Li was probably not born with skills to create the things we see in her videos, but she uses everything and everybody around her as a teacher. Li never attended college, but she shows us how useful self-learning can be in an age of plenty of learning resources.
Li lets the world see one of the most important aspects of the Chinese people, how they live their daily lives. She lets the world know that Chinese people love good food and are good at making art out of even simple raw materials, which have caught the hearts of her global audience.
Moreover, Li's charming videos show the simple joys of country living, which she can improve by using her head, heart and hands. While others become the product of their environment, she turns her surroundings into her product. Others see problems and feel frustrated, while Li goes and fixes them. We, therefore, can choose to be inspired by her, to seek the artistic solution and enjoy the creativity, joy and relaxation that "doing" life could offer.
