Consuming the Pastoral Desire: Li Ziqi, Food Vlogging and the Structure of Feeling in the Era of Microcelebrity

Abstract

This article studies how the new cultural form of food vlogging intervenes the perennial debate on tradition and modernity by focusing on the case of Li Ziqi, whose cinematic videos celebrating bucolic life won her popularity in China and overseas. A study of the production and reception of Li’s videos not only shows urbanites’ nostalgia for a pastoral way of life, but also reveals the role played by the more structural forces, i.e., the market and the state, in appropriating and managing the desire for and consumption of the pastoral for the construction of “modern identities” – both individually as a consumer and collectively as a nation. The market forces, including the ideology of consumerism, its attendant aesthetics as well as the entire regime of social media marketing, were present throughout Li’s celebrification. Meanwhile, the state got involved after Li’s rise to fame, when it became aware of her value for domestic and international publicity. If the market promotes a narrative that caters to the “aesthetical turn” in everyday life in late modernity, the state’s validation and appropriation of Li evinces “cultural nationalism” that departs from political nationalism and is more commensurate with consumerism. However, the Chinese state also tries to transcend the market discourse whose egalitarian form conceals substantive inequality, by positioning itself as an integrative force that bridges urban-rural gap. In creating Li Ziqi as a social media phenomenon, the market uses the rural as a resource to meet the urban desire for authenticity, while the Chinese state re-appropriates the icon of marketized media in its “rural rejuvenation” design to help the disadvantaged rural “other” regain its agency.