特刊专栏,纵横百家 做高质量阅读的传播者 |
On screen, Li Ziqi’s life seems to defy the rules of reality. The Chinese internet celebrity is famous for her videos in which she performs the work of a farmer with the grace of a fairy. Her fans on social media platforms, both in China and internationally, including YouTube and Weibo, number more than 58 million.
李子柒在镜头前的生活似乎已经超脱于现实。这位中国网红以她的视频作品而闻名,在视频中,她像仙女般优雅进行着农民的日常劳作,其在油管和新浪微博等国内外社交媒体上的粉丝已经超过了5800万。
In one video, she picks flowers on horseback in a red cape, evoking the image of Red Riding Hood. In another, she builds a bamboo furniture set using traditional Chinese techniques. While the videos have a cinematic quality to them, it’s her deep knowledge of food, nature, and Chinese culture that impresses viewers.
在一段视频中,她穿着红色斗篷在马背上采花,不禁让人想起了《小红帽》,而在其另一段作品中,她用中国传统工艺制作了一套竹制家具。虽然这些视频具有电影般的质感,但真正令观众印象深刻的是她对食物、自然和中国文化的深刻了解。
She appears to make everything from scratch, going as far as hatching baby ducklings and raising them just to make a sauce from egg yolk. Li rarely speaks in her videos, and when she does, it’s in the local dialect of her home province, Sichuan.
她似乎做什么都是从零开始,甚至孵化并抚养小鸭子们也只是为了用鸭蛋黄做酱。李子柒在她的视频中很少讲话,最多会以家乡的四川方言吐露一二。
She also seldom gives interviews. But in our exclusive interview with her, she opens up to us about her life, craft and early struggles as a one-woman band. “In today’s society, many people feel stressed,” Li says. “So when they watch my videos at the end of a busy day, I want them to relax and experience something nice, to take away some of their anxiety and stress.”
她也很少接受采访,但在我们对她的独家采访中,她向我们敞开讲述了她的生活,手艺以及她作为一个女子的个人早期奋斗历程。“在当今社会中,很多人时常感到压力很大,”李子柒说,她随后补充道:“所以当他们在繁忙的一天结束后看我的视频时,我希望他们能放松下来,体验一些美好的东西,消除一些焦虑和压力。”
Li grew up with her grandparents in a rural part of Sichuan province in southwestern China. She says she moved in with them after her stepmother mistreated her. When she was 14, she went to the city in search of work, but she decided to return to the countryside in 2012 to take care of her grandmother.
李子柒和她的祖父母一起在中国西南部四川省的农村长大,她表示在她的继母对她实施虐待之后,她就和祖父母住在一起了。14岁时,她去了城市找工作,但在2012年她决定回到农村照顾祖母。
Four years later, she began filming her life there. “When I worked in the city, it was about survival,” Li says. “Now when I work in the countryside, I feel like I’m truly living.” Li’s videos depict her and her grandmother as they go about their daily lives in their modest home. She is often seen preparing elaborate meals for her grandmother using basic ingredients and traditional techniques.
四年后,她开始在那里拍摄自己的生活。“我曾经在城市工作的时候,一切都是为了生存,”李子柒说。“而现在我在农村工作时,我觉得我在真切地活着。”李子柒的视频描绘了她和她的祖母在他们简朴的家里过着日常生活的情景,在视频中,她经常会用基本的原料和传统的烹饪技巧为她的祖母准备精致可口的饭菜。
“I simply want people in the city to know where their food comes from,” Li says. “A teacher friend once told me about some students who thought rice grew on trees. So I want kids in the city to know where their food comes from.” Li is part of a growing field of online video makers in China. The market is competitive, worth an estimated US$6.5 billion and with a potential audience of hundreds of millions.
“我只是想让城市里的人们知道他们的食物从何而来,”李子柒说。“我有一位当老师的朋友曾经告诉我,有些学生认为水稻是长在树上的,所以我想让城里的孩子们知道他们的食物来自哪里。”李子柒是中国日益壮大的短视频制作领域的一员,这个市场竞争激烈,其估价为65亿美元,拥有数亿的潜在用户。
Video channels depicting rural life are a dime a dozen. One only needs to scroll through TikTok and Kuaishou, a Chinese video app, to find clips of people catching fish with their bare hands, farmers fashioning clothes from burlap sacks and campers going full MacGyver in the wild.
描述农村生活的视频作品非常多,你只需要在抖音和快手上随意浏览,就能找到人们徒手抓鱼、农民用麻袋做衣服以及露营者在野外畅意野餐的视频片段。
But while many of these videos are fast-paced and cut with quick edits, Li’s videos have an ethereal, cinematic quality to them. “I think this is just how things happened,” she says. “At first, when I did everything myself, I’d set up a tripod, film and then press stop. That’s why all my shots are on a tripod and don’t move, and that’s why my videos are still filmed this way.”
此类视频通常节奏很快且剪辑紧凑,但李子柒的视频却有一种飘渺的、电影般的质感。“我是这么做的,”她说:“当我开始劳作前,我会先安装一个三脚架,然后开始拍摄,最后按下停止键。这就是为什么我所有的拍摄镜头都不会挪动,这也是我的视频仍然以这种方式拍摄的原因。”
Her detractors question the one-woman-band premise, but Li brushes it off as sour grapes. Two years ago, she uploaded a behind-the-scenes video showing how she used to operate on her own. Nowadays, she has help from a videographer and assistant, but she still directs all her videos.
她的批评者们质疑她的视频不可能是她一个人完成的,但李子柒认为他们的质疑是出于嫉妒。两年前,她上传了一段幕后视频,展示了她过去是如何独立运作视频拍摄的,而现在她有了一位摄像师和助理的协助,但她仍然负责指导所有的视频。
During our interview, which Li’s crew filmed, she did not hesitate to give precise instructions on which angle to shoot from and where to stand. She even suggested pouring tea for me while I said hello to her on camera (that shot ended up on the cutting floor because it felt too staged).
在我们对李子柒摄制组的拍摄和采访中,她毫不犹豫地给出了拍摄角度和拍摄位置的精确指示,她甚至建议在我从镜头前跟她打招呼的时候给我倒茶(那个片段最后没有被剪辑出来,因为我感觉太做作了)。
“I’ve always been the director of my videos,” Li says, “from what to film and how to film to how each shot is framed. Often, my videographer only knows what he’s filming on the day of the shoot.” The poise that Li displays in her well-polished videos belies a playfulness and spontaneity that only comes out when the camera is off.
李子柒说:“我一直是自己视频的导演,从拍摄对象到拍摄方式,再到每个镜头如何运作都是我负责的,通常,我的摄像师只了解拍摄当天他要怎么拍。”而李子柒在精心制作的视频中所表现出的泰然自若掩盖了一种她只有在镜头外才会表现出的嬉笑和天真。
While we were hanging out on a bridge, Li tried to pluck a lotus flower that was growing an arm’s length away. When she couldn’t reach it, she got down on all fours before completely falling on her stomach, laughing and joking in Sichuanese as she desperately tried to touch the flower.
我们在桥上玩的时候,李子柒想摘一朵一臂之遥的荷花。当她够不着的时候,她就四肢着地,然后完全趴在地上,用四川话又笑又闹,拼命地够着那朵花。
While Li’s videos allow her audience to indulge in a fantasy world, many of the techniques she portrays are grounded in real-world knowledge and come from a genuine desire for the pastoral ideal. The only thing she has sculpted is her on-screen persona. “I’m just filming my life,” she says. “Or rather, I’m just filming the life that I want.”
虽然李子柒的视频让她的观众沉浸在一个幻想的世界里,但她所描绘的许多技巧都是基于现实世界的知识,并且来自对田园理想的真实渴望,而她唯一刻意塑造的是她在屏幕上的形象。“我只是在拍摄我的生活,”她说。“更确切地说,我只是在拍摄我想要的生活。”
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