By Rei Tanotsuka, 6 March 2020
The nascence of physical beauty must be to reveal qualities of utility that can not be readily seen by most… beauty draws to it, the curiosity to find what nature has seen fit to conceal…
This is the ethereal Li Ziqi from Mianyang China, and she is nature’s enigma. A perfect blend of dichotomous values, exquisite beauty married to ditch digging, hog feeding and bamboo furniture making… No hyperbole, just a miraculous blend of impossibility, embodied in a petite frame, fired in a kiln of patriotism and filial piety.
If you don’t already know her, you are either watching too many feline videos or getting perpetually lost in the “dark web”, but lucky you, I’m giving you a brand new addiction!
Li Ziqi is the modern incarnate of a fairy tale princess but worthy of your prostration and respect because there’s NOTHING she can’t do… She’s not another screen queen whose objective is to twerk till it hurts.
When she tells you she’s gonna make a cotton jacket, she starts not with a pattern from Butterick, no no no, that’s only how the corner cutters do it.
She begins with a handful of cotton seeds…. Yep, she grows the cotton FIRST, then she separates the fibre from the husk, washes it, before fluffing it up into a fairy floss like ball, to START inserting it between the lining and outer fabric of the jacket.
THAT’S, how you make a jacket.
You will appreciate it more because it would have taken a year of your life, from conception to self couture. You won’t take it for granted by binning it after a few wears because it’s not “this season”. It took you 4 seasons to make, and a lifetime memory is cast from the first sprouting of the cotton seed, to the very last stitch on the seam.
Want a slice of wood oven pizza? Start making the oven. First, you need to get some bricks…. If you can’t believe the ingenuity of this modern day…. hold up, she’s the real deal, I don’t even know who I can compare her to!
Ikea is for cop outs. Want a new couch with a stable table? Go to the nearest bamboo forest! I honestly didn’t even know you could burn bamboo and flex it into smooth edges!
We NEED more women like this! She is the embodiment of the Divine Feminine. Strong, beautiful, generous and PROUD to be Chinese. When she first started becoming famous, naturally people wanted her to be ANOTHER kind of Asian, anything other than CHINESE, and rumours started circulating that she was either Japanese or Korean. This sister did the RIGHT THING AND MADE A VIDEO, telling the WORLD she is MADE IN CHINA and damn proud!
This, in my eyes, is what makes her unequivocally, emphatically gorgeous. Her truth is something that she owns and NO ONE can ever tell her what and who she is and who she isn’t.
Everything, from her angelic mien, her perfect sounding CHINESE NAME, to the traditional cuisine she makes, gives me hope that the future generations of ALL ASIANS will one day stand as proud as this sister!