Performing the digital pastoral: Environmental narrative,cultural nostalgia and commodified rurality in Li Ziqi’s videos

Introduction

In the context of accelerating global digital communication, local cultures are crossing linguistic and national boundaries at an unprecedented speed, being reinterpreted and consumed in new ways. As one of the most internationally influential content creators from China, Li Ziqi constructs a highly visualized and pastoralized representation of a ‘digital ecology’ through her YouTube videos. Centered on the rhythms of nature, traditional craftsmanship, and self-sufficient rural life, her videos not only evoke a nostalgic longing for rural living among urban audiences but also reflect the structural forces of market dynamics and state involvement in shaping the consumption of rural life and the construction of personal and national identities (Liang, 2022). As a prominent representative of traditional Chinese culture in the digital sphere, her work stands at the intersection of rural imagination, cultural nostalgia, and environmental affect in the contemporary media landscape.

Although existing research has extensively examined the phenomenon of Li Ziqi, particularly her role in national image construction, the projection of cultural soft power, and the articulation of digital nationalism (Xia et al., 2022), several limitations persist. Research on China’s use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has primarily focused on urban areas and the practices of urban residents (Oreglia et al., 2015). The rise of rural video creators, however, calls for closer scholarly attention (Zou, 2023). Moreover, most existing analyses approach her work from a macro-level perspective within communication studies, often overlooking the complex symbolic structures and affective mechanisms embedded within the videos themselves. In response, this study introduces the concept of ‘performing the digital pastoral’ as an analytical lens, guided by three core questions: First, how do Li Ziqi’s videos construct environmental narratives through linguistic and visual strategies? Second, how do these videos evoke cultural nostalgia and create emotional resonance with global audiences? Third, how is rural life commodified under the influence of platform logics and esthetic mediation?

To address these questions, this study adopts the method of multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA), integrating linguistic, visual, and ideological dimensions to examine how environmental narratives are crafted, how cultural nostalgia is activated, and how rurality is transformed into a commodified spectacle. Theoretically, this research is grounded in cultural studies, adopting a critical perspective on the production, circulation, and consumption of digital pastoral narratives in a global media environment. On a practical level, the case of Li Ziqi offers an alternative cultural pathway to understanding environmental communication beyond policy discourse. It highlights the role of visual expression and affective resonance in shaping public ecological awareness, while also providing critical insights for digital rural development.

The global circulation of the digital pastoral

Platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Xiaohongshu are saturated with content that showcases traditional handicrafts, rural life, and natural environments. This content has sparked a cross-cultural desire for the pastoral gaze and a growing trend toward ecological esthetics (Liu, 2020). These images not only respond to urban audiences’ emotional yearnings for slow living and authenticity but also form a codified system of pastoral representation that circulates globally, constantly replicated, disseminated, and reshaped under algorithmic logic.

Scholars have pointed out that such visual content is not merely a vehicle of cultural imagination but also a visual projection of global labor politics. Drawing upon representations of bodily labor, domestic ethics, and local place-making, it offers symbolic compensation for the affective dislocations of modern life (Li, 2020; Ma, 2023). Creators like Li Ziqi exemplify how the esthetics of self-sufficiency, rooted in traditional crafts, are intertwined with the traffic-driven logic of platform economies. The algorithmic recommendation system is not simply a neutral technological filter but an active agent in the esthetic standardization and politicization of pastoral imagery.

In the Chinese context, the localization of this global pastoral imaginary also depends on the expansion of rural digital infrastructure. According to data from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC, 2025), rural internet users have reached 313 million, accounting for 28.2% of the national total. The widespread adoption of ICTs among rural residents has not only enabled broader participation in content production but has also facilitated the reintegration of rural areas into global visual culture (Zhu et al., 2022). These digital practices are quietly reshaping the developmental trajectories of rural youth. Studies have shown that despite structural disadvantages, young people from rural backgrounds can achieve social mobility and skill advancement once they enter digitally mediated environments such as university systems and platform-based communities (Welser et al., 2019).

Nevertheless, current research on the digital pastoral tends to focus primarily on how platforms filter and distribute pastoral imagery, often overlooking how these images are activated and interpreted within specific cultural contexts. In reality, the digital pastoral is not a straightforward replication of the Western bucolic tradition. Rather, it constitutes a hybrid visual formation shaped simultaneously by global algorithmic mechanisms and localized experiential logics.

Constructing the pastoral under Chinese-style modernization

The sociocultural structure of China has long built its modernity narrative upon a binary division between the urban and the rural. Within dominant discourse, the countryside is often portrayed as a ‘non-modern’ space, either as the mirror image or the sacrifice of urban civilization (Shirley, 2015). It is marginalized as a symbol of backwardness and otherness (Jacka, 2006), yet simultaneously idealized as an emotional reservoir of tradition, nature, and order, a cultural response to the dislocations of modern urban society (Wang, 2023).

Li Ziqi’s content production is situated within this cultural tension. Her emphasis on Chinese ethics, female roles, and traditional craftsmanship draws deeply upon the symbolic resources of Confucian kinship (Cheng and Yu, 2022), while her esthetically rich and highly visual storytelling reconstructs a narrative space of the ‘ideal pastoral’ (Li, 2020). This representation aligns not only with global consumer expectations of an oriental pastoral, but also activates affective investments among domestic audiences in relation to national identity and cultural tradition (Yang and Luo, 2024).

It is important to note, however, that this pastoral vision is not entirely orchestrated by state or platform actors. Some studies highlight how rural residents themselves are engaging in practices that actively redefine rural culture. This creativity does not result from professional intervention but emerges as an immanent force embedded within the everyday rhythms of rural domestic life, always available to be activated (Xue and Cao, 2025). This perspective reminds us that the cultural meaning of the pastoral is neither a one-way projection nor a fully manufactured spectacle. Rather, it emerges at the intersection of multiple identity formations.

Existing research has largely focused on Li Ziqi’s construction of national identity and her use of visual esthetics (Yang, 2022), as well as her visual esthetics, which are often interpreted as products of collaboration between state discourse and cultural industry mechanisms (Horton, 2008). However, less attention has been paid to how the imagery of the digital pastoral is produced and circulated through performance. In other words, there is still a need to examine how the pastoral in Li Ziqi’s videos comes to be perceived.

Performance, authenticity, and platform mechanisms

Performance theory offers a crucial analytical lens for understanding visual cultural practices on social platforms. Goffman (1959) conceptualized everyday interactions as a series of staged performances, where individuals manage impressions and coordinate identities by shifting between frontstage and backstage behaviors. Butler (1990) further advanced the notion of performativity, emphasizing that identity is not a fixed essence but performatively constituted through repeated social enactments. Together, these perspectives challenge essentialist notions of an ‘authentic self’ and provide a foundational framework for analyzing the dynamic construction of identity on digital platforms.

Within the context of social media, performance theories have been widely applied to the study of influencer culture and self-presentation. Marwick and Boyd (2011) shows that in the social media—dominated landscape, celebrities engage in carefully calibrated performances of authenticity to maintain audience trust and visibility. Duffy (2015) conceptualizes such sustained digital self-fashioning as aspirational labor, particularly relevant for female creators who engage deeply with identity work and commercial participation on platforms. These performances not only offer the potential for social capital and economic gain, but also embed creators within complex intersections of consumer culture, gender roles, and algorithmic visibility. More recently, Marino (2024), through the concept of ‘performing refugeeness’, brings performativity into conflict settings by analyzing TikTok videos created by Ukrainian refugees. These digital performances, through a combination of material and affective discourses, activate transnational networks of digital care and connect emotionally invested publics across borders.

In pastoral-themed content, performance extends beyond personal identity to encompass spatial and cultural imaginaries, particularly the construction of ‘the rural’ as a visual and affective category. Zhao (2024) notes that creators often curate content to align with dominant visual tropes of a romanticized countryside, resulting in a stylized ‘rural esthetic’ that circulates widely on digital platforms. Such portrayals may enhance visibility but also risk reinforcing normative imaginaries, such as the ‘virtuous homemaker’ or ‘natural woman’ (Li, 2020), that align with gendered and classed expectations of rural life. Schaefer et al. (2017) frame this process as a spatial identity performance, whereby urban audiences nostalgically reimagine the countryside as a site of moral and esthetic redemption. Zou (2023) further argues that platform mechanisms hybridize rural representations, transforming the countryside into an affect-laden, fluid, and algorithmically responsive object. In this sense, rurality becomes not merely depicted but performed—mediated through platform tools, esthetic codes, and participatory cultures.

Under the dual influence of algorithmic structures and audience expectations, elements such as nature, tradition, and rurality are transformed into performable cultural resources. These symbols no longer refer directly to stable referents but are instead reformatted into modular, repeatable, and emotionally charged units, what Van Dijck (2013) calls ‘selectable’ media components optimized for algorithmic circulation. Authenticity here is not intrinsic but strategic, carefully crafted through visual codes, narrative tropes, and interaction rituals. As Lin and de Kloet (2019) suggest, such dynamics enable the rise of an ‘unlikely creative class’ in China, content creators who, often from rural or marginal backgrounds, engage global audiences through strategic cultural performances. By focusing on Li Ziqi’s visual storytelling, this article explores how the digital pastoral operates not simply as a cultural theme but as a performative framework: one that mobilizes esthetics, emotions, and platform affordances to reconfigure the meaning of rural life in the digital age.

Method

To explore the multilayered meanings of the digital pastoral, this study adopts a purposeful sampling strategy by selecting the 10 most-viewed videos on Li Ziqi’s official YouTube channel, concentrated mainly in her peak production period (2018–2020). These videos are treated not as a statistically representative sample, but as the most widely circulated articulation of the digital pastoral, reflecting the discourse that has achieved the greatest visibility. The selection prioritizes thematic and multimodal richness. They consistently revolve around a triadic visual and affective structure of nature, the past, and the rural, forming a coherent and comparable set of cases for analysis. YouTube is chosen as the focal platform due to its function as Li Ziqi’s primary medium for global dissemination. It not only aggregates feedback from international audiences but also amplifies the videos’ role as cultural intermediaries, offering a crucial site for examining their transnational reception and meaning-making.

This study builds on the works of Machin (2013) and Lin (2024), extending the applicability of MCDA in the study of Chinese digital communication in global contexts. Integrating linguistic, visual, and ideological dimensions, the analysis begins with micro-level semiotic practices to investigate how Li Ziqi’s videos construct environmental narratives, evoke global cultural nostalgia, and commodify a particular form of digital pastoral under the combined forces of platform logics and market mechanisms. Specifically, linguistic coding focuses on the lexical choices and semantic orientations found in the video subtitles, examining naming strategies, verbal processes, and metaphor systems. The visual dimension involves a detailed analysis of character representation, spatial composition, and color schemes, uncovering the construction of pastoral imagery and its relationship to nature and labor. At the ideological level, attention is given to the values and cultural attitudes embedded in the video texts, particularly their implicit critique of industrial modernity and their idealized celebration of natural rhythms.

As underscored by the methodological spirit of MCDA, the primary concern is the in-depth investigation of how underlying ideologies are naturalized through specific multimodal discursive practices (Machin, 2016). Consequently, this study focuses on the 10 most-viewed videos, which exemplify both typicality and case relevance within Li Ziqi’s body of work. Rather than aiming to represent the full spectrum of content online, these videos are treated as particularly illustrative instances that illuminate how a specific form of digital pastoral is constructed, circulated, and made meaningful. The selected videos span a wide range of themes, including traditional festival foods (e.g. Chinese New Year Goods and candied hawthorn), the artisanal processing and preservation of fruits and vegetables (e.g. tomato paste and dried persimmons), region-specific delicacies (e.g. Liuzhou ‘Luosifen’), the agricultural lifecycle and seasonal rhythms (featuring crops like purple rice, cucumbers, cotton, and rapeseed oil), and handicrafts made from natural materials (e.g. bamboo furniture). Based on narrative features and thematic content, the videos are categorized into three analytical dimensions: performing tradition, performing nature, and performing rurality (see Table 1). These dimensions reflect Li Ziqi’s digital pastoral as it expresses continuity with traditional culture, a delicate attunement to natural rhythms, and the construction of rural labor and regional identity.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Categorization of Li Ziqi’s videos into three dimensions of cultural performance.

Video no.	Video title	Keywords	Initial thematic tag	Analytical category
1	A special program on New Year snacks	New Year goods, snacks, peanuts, sunflower seeds, festival, candied hawthorn	Festive foods and cultural time	Performing tradition
2	A pot of wine among watermelon fields	watermelon, grapes, brewing, harvest	Homemade transformation of fruits	Performing nature
3	Liuzhou ‘Luosifen’	Liuzhou ‘Luosifen’, spicy, local taste	Regional cuisine and identity	Performing rurality
4	It’s a red mountain, and in the fall. . .	air-dried persimmons, autumn, seasonal changes, sweetness	Homemade transformation of fruits	Performing rurality
5	The life of purple rice, pumpkins, and peanuts	purple rice, pumpkin, nuts, daily work, harvest	Plant life and agricultural rhythm	Performing nature
6	Bamboo Sofa	bamboo, furniture, handcrafting	Crafting with natural materials	Performing tradition
7	The life of cucumbers	cucumber, planting, daily work, harvest	Plant life and agricultural rhythm	Performing nature
8	The purpose of cotton	cotton, planting, spinning and weaving, daily work, harvest	Transforming raw nature into domestic objects	Performing rurality
9	The life of rapeseed oil	rapeseed oil, pressing, cooking	Plant life and agricultural rhythm	Performing rurality
10	Red sapphire tomato sauce	tomato, jam, cooking	Homemade transformation of fruits	Performing rurality

Note. Table 1 shows the categorization of 10 representative YouTube videos by Li Ziqi into three dimensions of cultural performance. This study identifies three core mechanisms: performing nature, performing tradition, and performing rurality, which guide the subsequent analysis.

For example, videos featuring the rhythm of agricultural labor, such as those on purple rice and pumpkins, are analyzed under the performing nature category. Videos centered on festival foods and seasonal memories, such as the New Year Goods episode, are classified under the performing tradition category. Regionally specific dishes like Liuzhou ‘Luosifen’ are included in the performing rurality category. This fine-grained thematic taxonomy reveals the layered cultural meanings embedded in Li Ziqi’s digital pastoral and establishes a robust empirical foundation for the theoretical discussions that follow. Although the analysis was conducted by a single researcher, thematic saturation was reached through iterative viewing and comparative coding, ensuring that no significantly new patterns emerged beyond the selected 10 videos. Each video was examined in detail, not only through a multimodal lens but also with attention to its cultural and ideological implications. This approach avoids a reductive or one-dimensional reading and offers a holistic understanding of the complexity and multi-dimensionality of Li Ziqi’s videos. In doing so, the study provides empirical support for understanding the global cultural significance of her work within the broader dynamics of platform-mediated communication.

What is being performed

Performing nature: how visual storytelling embodies the ecological ideal

In Li Ziqi’s videos, nature is not documented as a primordial entity but is carefully staged through the orchestration of multimodal resources. From sweeping landscapes and the growth cycles of plants and animals to the intricate details of agricultural labor, every element is woven into a rhythmic and esthetically curated narrative structure. Nature here is neither raw, chaotic, nor untamable; rather, it is rendered as harmonious, abundant, approachable, and imbued with a sense of order. What emerges is not a documentary reproduction of the rural real, but a constructed digital pastoral, a mediated ecological scene composed through cinematic language, lighting choreography, musical rhythm, and embodied gestures. Nature becomes something to be watched, felt, and participated in, a subject shaped by affective engagement rather than passive observation.

In video The life of purple rice, pumpkins, and peanuts, the camera gently zooms in on a seed breaking through moist soil, bathed in side-lit sunshine, accompanied by blooming wildflowers and the ambient hum of insects. This is followed by scenes of Li Ziqi tilling the soil with a hoe, pruning vines with her hands, and removing weeds, all captured with slow pacing and composed physical movement (see Figure 1). Such meticulous visual arrangement and rhythmic editing not only emphasize the cyclical temporality of plant growth but also embed the rhythm of the human body into the seasonal pulse of nature. In another video, A pot of wine among watermelon fields, similar sequences appear, soil loosening, planting, and harvesting of grapes and watermelons, all interwoven with labor movements. The result is a highly aestheticized pastoral temporality, where nonverbal multimodal storytelling evokes an affective experience of nature.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Li Ziqi was sowing seeds.

A notable feature of Li Ziqi’s work is the minimal use of spoken language or subtitles; meaning is conveyed primarily through visual framing, ambient sound, background music, and corporeal action. As Chen and Pun (2025) argue, this mode of communication demonstrates how digital and cultural production can occur through labor itself. This ‘de-verbalized’ form of expression constitutes a distinctive mode of spectatorship in digital environments, shifting the interpretive burden from explicit explanation to sensory engagement. As one YouTube comment notes: ‘It looks so effortless, but imagine how much sweat and effort it takes to make all this happen. Without true love for life, this would be impossible. Behind all the sweetness lies immense hard work!’ Such reactions suggest that nature in these videos is not simply presented as a passive backdrop but is co-constituted with the laboring body to form a performative pastoral scene open to emotional resonance. Nature is sensed through the body, choreographed through the lens, and activated by affect, becoming a visualized form of an ecological ideal in the digital age.

Performing tradition: nostalgic esthetics and temporal emotion

In Li Ziqi’s videos, tradition does not appear as a historical relic or cultural specimen but is reinterpreted as a tangible lifestyle and emotional structure. This reproduction of tradition does not rely on verbal narration or knowledge-based explanations. Instead, it is achieved through the rhythm of images, physical labor, and the details of objects, visually ‘rebirthing’ tradition within everyday life. This study argues that the mechanism of this performed tradition mainly involves two aspects. First, it evokes viewers’ emotional projection on the traditional order of life through nostalgic esthetics. Second, under the algorithm-driven information filtering system, the non-standardized features of handmade products may indeed break through the ‘recommendation logic’ and create unexpected dissemination nodes (Peck, 2020), making tradition a temporal experience rather than a static label compressed into history.

In the video A special program on New Year snacks, Li Ziqi silently presents the traditional rituals of preparing festive goods before the Spring Festival. The camera captures the entire process of her wiping hawthorns, skewering, boiling sugar, and coating with sugar, eventually completing the production of candied hawthorns. Additionally, the video shows her making popcorn with the village elders (see Figure 2). The whole process features almost no verbal explanation and relies solely on the presentation of actions, the rhythm of the visuals, and the layers of background music to construct a warm seasonal atmosphere. Here, making festive goods is no longer just a result of holiday consumption but becomes a bodily memory shared across generations and a continuation of everyday ethics. Fire, sugar, water, peanuts, popping, and boiling, these sensory symbols are shaped into a gentle visual nostalgia through slow-motion shots, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in the sensuous recognition that tradition is still alive.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Li Ziqi and local elders were engaging in traditional popcorn-making.

In Bamboo Sofa, tradition is reactivated through the complete narrative of handcrafted object-making. The video begins with a view of a lush bamboo forest. Li Ziqi personally selects, cuts, transports, carves, numbers, and assembles bamboo until the final bamboo sofa is completed. Throughout this process, craftsmanship is not a cold, abstract knowledge symbol but an embodied labor practice. Her measuring gestures, sawing rhythm, and assembly sequence are all bodily perceptions and reconstructions of the material. Tradition ceases to be an abstract cultural heritage and becomes a lived skill that is touched, used, and created. This meticulous handcrafting process also constitutes a gentle critique of modern industrial products and fast-paced lifestyles, conveying the esthetic stance that ‘slow work yields fine results’.

When these two videos are placed side by side, it is clear that Li Ziqi constructs a rhythmic healing mode of viewing through her imagery. She does not explicitly define what tradition is but rather invites viewers to feel tradition through visual rhythms and bodily movements. This perceived tradition is precisely a mechanism for generating temporal emotion. The regulation of seasons, the repetition of labor, the use of tools, and the transformation of food all manifest time within the imagery. The tradition performed by Li Ziqi is a time structure that can be experienced, an emotional adjustment to the disordered pace of life, and a key mechanism for constructing familiarity, order, and cultural roots within the digital pastoral landscape.

Performing rurality: platform logic and the affective economy of visibility

In Li Ziqi’s videos, rurality is not simply a filming location or background space but a carefully constructed visual subject. It integrates labor, local flavors, social networks, esthetic imagery, and consumer goods, becoming a nexus of visibility and affective economy within the platform context. Nested within the dual logics of globalized communication and e-commerce commercialism, this ‘performed rurality’ no longer serves as a realistic depiction of everyday life. Instead, it is a visual landscape that can be disseminated, consumed, and emotionally invested in.

In Liuzhou ‘Luosifen’, Li Ziqi uses delicate multi-camera storytelling to show the complex production process of Luosifen noodles. The video documents the stages from bamboo shoot harvesting and wood ear mushroom picking to pickling the bamboo shoots and making chopped chili, then to digging snails by the creek and boiling the soup base, finally presenting a bowl of fragrant and spicy Luosifen. The video reveals not only the complexity of the food but also the labor chain behind the local flavor. The endpoint of this chain extends far beyond the screen. The e-commerce products under Li Ziqi’s namesake brand include Luosifen. The video constructs local authenticity through ‘labor that can be watched’ while transforming rural experience into transregional consumption possibilities through ‘products that can be purchased’. ¹ This operational mechanism from rural food to online store commodities is a typical strategy for making rurality visible in the platform era and reflects the current commercial affective logic of rural imagination.

In video The life of rapeseed oil, Li Ziqi focuses her camera on the rhythm and structured daily life of the countryside. This video shows the complete process from rapeseed planting, growth, and harvesting to drying, milling, and oil extraction. Scenes of her planting various daily vegetables and greeting neighbors while walking rural paths are interspersed, giving the impression that everything is captured continuously in the most natural state (see Figure 3). This arrangement of scenes is no longer aimed at showcasing a specific skill but constructs a self-sufficient, orderly daily rurality (Zou, 2023). The countryside becomes not only a cultural symbol but also an emotional space characterized by familiar social relations, a controllable life pace, and the direct connection between labor and results. The video ends with making foods such as spicy chicken and salted egg yolk pastries using rapeseed oil, linking planting and cooking life chains while reinforcing the complete life system of rurality through the cycle of things.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Li Ziqi was greeting her neighbor while working.

Taken together, the rurality performed by Li Ziqi is not a static idyll. It is a cultural form encoded with affect and embedded in commercial logics under platform governance. On one hand, these videos offer a stable narrative framework of local self-sufficiency and regional flavor, satisfying urban viewers’ cultural projections and spiritual consolation regarding the countryside. On the other hand, rural elements in the videos often serve as content tools for e-commerce brands, making ‘watching the countryside’ a prerequisite for ‘consuming the countryside’. This affective economy of visibility allows rurality not only to be seen but also desired, circulated, and transformed into a new resource structure within digital culture.

After performing the pastoral

Conclusion

Centering on Li Ziqi’s videos on YouTube and employing a MCDA approach, this study has explored how performing the digital pastoral reshapes the visual and cultural imagination of rural China on a global platform. Returning to the three guiding questions raised in the beginning, the analysis demonstrates how environmental narratives are crafted through multimodal esthetic strategies, how cultural nostalgia is mobilized to generate emotional resonance among audiences worldwide, and how rural life is transformed into a commodified spectacle under platform logics.

Overall, this study addresses the limitations of existing research on the Li Ziqi phenomenon, which has predominantly relied on macro-level analysis while overlooking internal multimodal structures. By providing a granular multimodal examination, this study constructs the theoretical concept of ‘performing the digital pastoral’. This framework not only reveals how pastoral imagery is actively produced and enacted through the interplay of language, visuals, and ideology, but also offers a new entry point for understanding the relationship between the pastoral and modernity in the digital age. Ultimately, the analysis demonstrates that the digital pastoral is not a retreat from modernity, but rather a complex negotiation between the personal and the algorithmic, the real and the fictional, the local and the global.

This study further argues that the global dissemination of rural imagery is not a one-way process of cultural export, but rather an outcome of continuous interaction among creators, platforms, and audiences. In other words, the global resonance of Li Ziqi’s pastoral arises from its capacity to visually escape modern life while structurally remaining deeply rooted in the emotional demands, technological conditions, and capitalist logics of modernity. Through this analysis, the study further advances theoretical discussions in digital media research concerning modernity and affective politics.

The ideal countryside is not a fixed destination but a process of ongoing negotiation (Shucksmith, 2018). The widespread global resonance of the digital pastoral stems, on one hand, from its activation of emotional imaginaries around ecological ethics and traditional lifeways. On the other hand, it is also reconfigured by algorithmic systems and market forces as a consumable cultural commodity. This dual logic of emotion and commodification is evident not only in social media productions exemplified by Li Ziqi, but also in rural-themed digital games such as Stardew Valley (Sutherland, 2020). Whether through immersive pastoral gameplay or visualized short-form video, these digital practices collectively construct the countryside as an emotionally charged and esthetically curated object. However, this therapeutic representation is not without consequence. It often conceals the structural challenges facing real rural communities. The emotional imagery of the countryside tends to sidestep deeper contradictions such as environmental degradation, the urban–rural digital divide, and gender imbalances (Li et al., 2020), presenting rural life in global circulation as an ‘affective other’ detached from its political and economic contexts.

In practical terms, the digital pastoralism represented by Li Ziqi not only fulfills global audiences’ esthetic desire for the rural, but also offers a potential model for the international communication of Chinese rural culture. Within the global media landscape, it helps complicate Western-centric visual regimes and enhances the cultural visibility of rural China. Importantly, the influence of the digital pastoral is not confined to the level of esthetic reception by global viewers. It is increasingly feeding back into the everyday practices of rural subjects themselves. Xu et al. (2025), through ethnographic research in northern Chinese villages, found that short videos have shaped how rural women reinterpret gender roles, fostering intergenerational negotiations and forms of ‘subtle resistance’ between mothers and daughters. This illustrates that the digital pastoral is not a singular media performance but part of a layered system of viewing, negotiation, and reinterpretation.

Rather than being a conclusion about the ‘real countryside or not’, this study positions the digital pastoral as an unfinished performance, a cultural practice that continues to be watched, produced, and contested. The version performed by Li Ziqi is not merely a cultural product, but a concentrated expression of modern anxieties, ecological crises, and identity constructions in digital space. Future research may further examine labor relations within digital rural practices, particularly how platform capitalism participates in constructing and manipulating authenticity, in order to deepen our understanding of the cultural politics embedded in the digital pastoral.