(The Reading Project, read by a child)
Northern Bright Bookshelf
Mr. Paulson Reads
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Monday, December 21, 2020
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Friday, December 11, 2020
Thursday, December 10, 2020
v Kids vocabulary: Christmas
Kids vocabulary: Christmas
[https://youtu.be/Kg__vXsU8xw]
Learn Christmas vocabulary, https://youtu.be/q1b7cBvGLjM
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Saturday, December 5, 2020
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Monday, November 23, 2020
Friday, November 20, 2020
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Monday, November 16, 2020
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Friday, November 13, 2020
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Friday, November 6, 2020
Watch that hidden poison in your rice
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/life-culture/watch-that-hidden-poison-in-your-rice
HEALTH
Watch that hidden poison in your rice
HEALTH
Watch that hidden poison in your rice
Besides seafood, rice products have the highest arsenic content. Long-term exposure to arsenic is linked to cancer
DR MICHAEL LIM
NOV 9, 2019 05:50 AM
MANY may be surprised that the large majority of cancers are related to environmental causes and genetic causes comprise a minority. Hence, the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink - they all have a bearing on our health.
Rice is a major food staple in this part of the world. Just recently, one of my patients, Mdm A, who had been eating a brand of rice which is less commonly consumed by the public but is available in high end supermarkets, was surprised that after consuming it for one year, her blood arsenic level was significantly elevated.
Arsenic in food: seafood and rice.
Arsenic is a naturally occurring metal element that is present in water, air and soil, and is absorbed by some food crops as they grow. The forms of arsenic can be broadly divided into two categories; inorganic and organic. The term organic here refers to the chemical form and not the method of growing rice.
While inorganic arsenic is the main toxic form of arsenic, the common form of organic arsenic (predominantly DMA) can also be toxic though organic arsenic compounds are generally considered to be of little toxicological significance.
The highest levels of arsenic are found in fish, crustaceans, and seaweed, but the arsenic is mainly organic and hence considered to have relatively minimal toxicological effect.
Seafood aside, rice products have the highest arsenic content. Rice, being grown in flooded soils, is exposed to higher arsenic content in the soil and rice plants have evolved efficient mechanisms of capturing arsenic from soil solution. Hence, rice has higher levels of inorganic arsenic than other cereal foods.
Permissible levels of arsenic
Arsenic is classified by The International Agency for Research on Cancer, the European Food Safety Authority and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a carcinogen based on the association between long-term exposure to arsenic with skin, lung and bladder cancers.
Studies have linked high chronic (prolonged or long-term) exposure with adverse health effects in multiple organ systems including the stomach, kidneys, liver, and in coronary heart disease and diabetes.
Hence, in April 2016, the FDA proposed a limit of 100 parts per billion (ppb) for inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal to reduce infant exposure to inorganic arsenic. In January 2016, the European Commission implemented regulations controlling the level of inorganic arsenic in rice products. For example, the inorganic arsenic content in rice destined for the production of food for infants and young children should not exceed 0.1 mg/kg wet weight.
Arsenic content in rice: high levels in rice bran and rice milk
The arsenic content in rice varies according to the type of soil where it is grown, the processing of the rice and the way of cooking the rice.
In terms of the source of rice, in a publication in October 2015 in Environmental Science and Pollution Research journal, comparison of arsenic content from different sources of rice grains showed that on the whole, rice grains from United States of America had twice the level of arsenic of rice from Asian countries.
Generally, basmati rice is lower in arsenic than other kinds of rice whereas brown rice has a higher content of arsenic than white. Brown rice is higher in inorganic arsenic than white rice as arsenic is concentrated in the bran that is removed by milling to produce white rice.
The amount of arsenic present in rice products also depends on the way the rice product is processed.
Rice bran is composed of the hard outer layers of the rice grain and it contains a large amount of fibre. Although often thought of as a healthy fibre food product, one may be surprised to know that among the rice products, the highest arsenic concentration has been found in rice bran.
Rice cakes and rice crackers are popular snacks but the arsenic content can be higher than that in cooked rice. While consuming rice milk, be aware the arsenic content is higher than the amount that is generally allowed in drinking water. In the United Kingdom, children than 4½ years are advised against having rice milk because of arsenic concerns. The US Environmental Protection Agency, the European Union and the World Health Organization have set a level of 10 µg per litre for total arsenic concentrations in drinking water.
Reducing arsenic in rice by soaking
Studies by Mosley and Meharg from the United Kingdom showed that by soaking the rice overnight before cooking, using a ratio of 5 times as much water as rice, only 18 per cent of the arsenic remained in the rice. The time the rice is soaked in water allows the arsenic to leave the rice into the water. The following day, drain the water and rinse the rice thoroughly with fresh water. Add 5 parts of water to each part of rice and cook till the rice is tender. Do not boil the rice till it is dry. Drain the water again and rinse the rice with hot water to get rid of the cooking residual water. However, if the rice is cooked till there is no more water or it is cooked with a rice cooker, the arsenic is reabsorbed into the rice. If the same ratio is used for cooking but not soaked overnight, 43 per cent of the arsenic remained in the rice.
Putting arsenic in rice in perspective
Before you decide to change to a no rice diet, you should know that the lung cancer and bladder cancer risk attributable to lifetime exposure to all rice products is a small portion of all cases of these cancers, at 39 cases per million people (10 cases/million bladder cancer and 29 cases/million lung cancer). This additional 39 cases are a small fraction of the 90,000 per million people who develop lung and bladder cancer over a lifetime from all causes.
Rice is not the only source of arsenic in food. A 2014 European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report stated that the main contributor of inorganic arsenic, except for infants and toddlers, was grain-based processed products (non-rice-based). In the ESFA report, other important contributors to the overall intake in all age classes were rice, milk and dairy products and drinking water. Food experts do not consider the consumption of rice products a few times a week a health risk, and rice continues to be a part of the international recommendations on food.
Things to note
Remember the following when making decisions on rice:
* Do not be fooled by " organic" rice labels - they have no bearing on the arsenic content.
* White rice has a lower content of arsenic compared to brown rice.
* Asian sources of rice have lower arsenic content.
* Young children below 5 years should avoid rice milk and reduce rice-based snacks.
*Apparently "healthy" rice bran has the highest arsenic content among rice products.
*Cooking rice the right way can minimise the arsenic to negligible levels.
* Eating the "right" rice will have no significant adverse impact on your health. Hence, there is no need to give up your chicken rice, nasi biryani and nasi lemak!
This series is produced on alternate Saturdays in collaboration with Singapore Heart, Stroke & Cancer Centre.
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Friday, October 23, 2020
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Friday, October 16, 2020
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Monday, October 12, 2020
Saturday, October 10, 2020
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Политически виц на английски
https://www.jokesinlevels.com/
Политически виц на английски
Politician – Level 3
Sep 14, 2020 | Level 3
Политически виц на английски
Politician – Level 3
Sep 14, 2020 | Level 3
While walking down the street one day a corrupt politician is tragically hit by a car and killed. His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a politician around these parts so we’re not sure what to do with you.”
“No problem, just let me in,” says the politician.
“Well, I’d like to, but I have orders from the higher-ups. What we’ll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend your eternity.”
“Really? I’ve made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,” says the politician.
“I’m sorry, but we have our rules.”
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.
Everyone is very happy. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and talk about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people. They played a friendly game of golf and then had a lobster, caviar and the finest champagne for dinner.
Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who is having a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are all having such a good time that, before the politician knows it, it is time to go. Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises.
The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens in heaven, where St. Peter is waiting for him. “Now it’s time to visit heaven for a day.”
So, the politician joins a group of smiling souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realises it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
“Well then, you’ve spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.”
The politician reflects for a minute, then he answers: “Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.”
So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.
Now the doors of the elevator open and he is in the middle of a desert covered with waste and garbage. He sees all his friends, dressed in dirty clothes, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.
The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulders.”I don’t understand,” stammers the politician. “Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?” The devil smiles at him and says, “Yesterday we were campaigning to get your vote. Today, you voted.”
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Monday, September 21, 2020
Friday, September 18, 2020
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Monday, August 31, 2020
Friday, August 21, 2020
Finnish schools teach languages earlier than ever, but struggle to move beyond English (+ audio)
"Children starting their basic primary schooling this week are guaranteed the opportunity to learn a foreign language in first grade, but most will have to make do with English.
That's not an ideal situation for those who already have a high level of English (are native English speakers), such as Sanna Boow's eight-year-old daughter who only moved to Finland two years ago from New Zealand.
She started school last year in Kirkkonummi, but had to join the English-as-a-second language class with everyone else."She's just said that she's really bored, as she's just sitting there listening," says Boow. "It's her least favourite class."
The problem, according to Boow, is the way language choices are made. Many schools don't offer a choice at all: only English is on offer. In those that do have alternatives, there are often minimum number requirements and that relies on enough other parents choosing the right options.
"They had a vote among the parents about what language the parents would want, Swedish or English," adds Boow. "If there's not more than 12 who choose Swedish, then English would be the other language. There was not enough interest so she had to have English classes like everyone else."
English not the best option
This is a common story. According to data from the National Agency for Education, some 83 percent of children learn English as their first foreign language.
While this might be annoying for children who already know the language, neuroscientist Minna Huotilainen of the University of Helsinki says it's also not great for those without a background in English.
Most Finnish kids, says Huotilainen, would be better served by first learning some other language instead."If you think about a seven-year-old in the first grade, there are so many strengths in language learning at that age," says Huotilainen, citing pronunciation, word separation, getting to grips with new phonemes as examples.
Learning lots of vocabulary at a young age is much more challenging than learning the sounds, so it pays to learn languages where pronunciation and listening skills are difficult and avoiding those where learning masses of vocabulary is key and investing in vocabulary at a later age.For native Finnish speakers, Huotilainen says French and Portuguese have different phonemes — that is, the different sounds that make up words — that are harder to pick up in adulthood.
Tonal languages like Mandarin, Thai and Taiwanese Hokkien are also a good option as tones are tricky to master for grownups.Back of the queue, for optimal language development in kids with normal language acquisition skills, is English. If a child has difficulties in learning languages, it might make sense to start English early.
"But for every other child I would not, because they will learn English anyway," said Huotilainen.
A tale of two cities
In Helsinki, schools have offered foreign languages from first grade since 2018. The capital was a trailblazer in that regard, with schools nationwide adopting that policy in 2019.
Even so, the city is working to encourage more families to learn other languages."We started working with pre-primary teachers and groups to introduce languages in those groups. So we tried to raise awareness about languages in these groups. The awareness about language learning has been increasing since then,” said the city's language coordinator Satu Koistinen.
The strategy seems to have paid off. In 2018 just ten percent of students starting their first foreign language chose English. In 2019 that jumped to 15 percent.
The acknowledged leader in language diversity in Finland is Tampere, and the woman responsible is Outi Verkama. She says that the key is consistent work across the city, at preschool level and in schools."Our principle is to support the families so that the kids can start with the language they want to; all areas in the city offer equal possibilities for each family," says Verkama.
All kids in Tampere's daycare centres get 'language showers' between the ages of three and five. These are short taster sessions in languages they will get the chance to learn in local schools (as opposed to 'language baths', which offer language immersion in a specific foreign language for children in certain daycare groups).
Then in preschool, children do eight weeks of tuition in each of four language options at their local schools, taught by the same teachers that would teach the classes in school.
Only then do parents choose, and it seems to be working. In 2020 some 35.8 percent of children entering first grade in Tampere chose to learn a language other than English.
Children outside of Tampere have a less extensive choice of languages, and those native English speakers stuck in English classes have to push for more challenging work.
Take the plunge
Sanna Boow says the teachers have been understanding, but she's hoping her daughter gets a bit more help with more advanced aspects of language learning.
"It'd be nice to have more tuition in writing skills, for example," says Boow.
Minna Huotilainen says that parents should be brave and take the plunge if their kids have the chance to learn a different language.There is plenty of time to develop fluency in English, which is almost ubiquitous in Finland anyway.
"The learning methods have developed so much and they are such fast learners, and they are surrounded by English all the time so they learn English so easily," says Huotilainen.
This week's All Points North podcast covered first foreign language choices in schools, among other topics. You can listen to the full podcast via the embedded player here, Yle Areena, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your usual podcast player using the RSS feed. Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the APN newsletter.
Story continues after "
Thursday, August 20, 2020
FB We need to redesign the gardening and farming system is because the standard Western approach just does NOT WORK to meet real people’s real needs in the real world
https://www.facebook.com/groups/permacultureglobal/permalink/3341113852606642/?__tn__=K-R
"I’M TIRED of arguing about RACE AND COLONIALISM AND POLITICS that have NOTHING to do with Permaculture! Let’s ARGUE about GARDENING TECHNIQUES for a change instead!
The reason we need to redesign the gardening and farming system is because the standard Western approach just does NOT WORK to meet real people’s real needs in the real world! Using the standard approach you spend $1000/season, and hundreds of labor hours to grow $300 of produce!
And in a way that uses more materials and is worse for nature than shopping at a grocery store, which doesn’t make sense!
That’s because this system historically evolved out of colonial agriculture that relied on slave labor, so the extra “input” work was “free.” Traditional home and community gardens around the world followed the “law of diminishing returns” (80/20 principle) and people stopped doing extra work after that extra work no longer made sense! In most horticultural societies people grow most of their own food on a few hours of labor per week. These gardens met human needs sustainably while actually increasing biodiversity.
20% of weeding work, for example gets you 80% of the crop yield benefit, but completely weed free “clean” fields were conspicuous consumption that showed a land owner was so wealthy he could put his slaves to work doing useless aesthetic labor. This reduction in biodiversity has no benefit to humans. In fact, now we realize that because it has a huge negative impact on ecosystem health, it may even be a case of where it goes beyond diminished returns and causes “negative returns.”
But the basic aesthetic of this system is the “dominance of nature,” utterly destroying an ecosystem and converting it to exclusive human use. The main benefit is that it allows farming and farm land to be centralized under hierarchical control so the yields of a worker can be distributed upwards to a ruling elite. This is no secret, it’s a well-known corner stone of the colonial “divide and conquer” strategy, to confiscate sustainable productive family and community farm land and centralize it under a ruling elite, which then has an incentive to maintain an oppressive social hierarchy. This was done around the world in the colonial era.
But look of the slave labor approach was seen as “culturally superior” and exported around the world with colonialism, replacing highly efficient in human labor and ecologically beneficial farms, on the grounds that our “clean” looking agriculture in tidy rows was “superior.” This was used as justification to remove indigenous people off their land. Because even though many of these highly sustainable indigenous systems were documented to be many times more productive than dramatically unsustainable European systems of the time, the indigenous farms were claimed to be “undeveloped.” Thus, colonizers spread across America, claiming “undeveloped land” and destroying highly diverse, sustainable and highly productive agroecologies with low-production, unsustainable deserts. Healthy native landscapes were replaced by the already colonized models of Europe.
Later, the same aesthetic judgement was used to confiscate land from African American farmers. After being freed from slavery, many black families were given access to land to farm. Others acquired land in other places around the country. Period reports from white policy makers were quite clear that the black families had used the land to set up highly efficient food forest systems that met their needs on a few hours of labor, which was seen as unacceptable because it did not utilize black labor to produce an excess for white society. So the land was confiscated and given to white land owners to force the black farmers to farm in the colonial manor at low or no wages.
The rise of “green revolution” techniques using fossil fuels and plastics allowed a whole new level of centralization, and many statist colonial theorists like Henry Kissinger well-recognized the divide and conquer potential. Armies of “agriculture” students were sent as apostles for the new methods around the globe, selling the new techniques to dictators and warlords. Indigenous peoples were pushed to even more marginal land with thin soils, and the rich soils and ecologies their families had created over generations of investment were burned off to demonstrate the “high yield” potential of the “superior” western techniques. Meanwhile, the poor productivity of indigenous farms on their new desert landscapes were used to show how “poor” indigenous productivity was, and to justify Westernization as “defeating hunger!”
Meanwhile old growth food forests burn, people grow fat while malnourished, ocean dead zones grow, and a mass extinction continues on.
And the same is true in the developed world, where the same agribusinesses, created as tools of colonial warfare, are exploiting people’s desires for self-sufficiency and connection with nature, to sell their corporate products of oil, plastic and concrete, and an HGTV aesthetic of clean tidy gardens that leaves no room for nature. Nature must be dominated with their handy and affordable products! People’s good intentions are used to make money for the wealthy at the expense of their own health and nature, and the idea of white, western supremacy is reinforced relative to the “dirty, uncivilized” look of traditional societies around the world who live in cooperation with nature.
When we begin to embrace working with nature instead of against it, we’re unwriting one of the most basic ways we’ve been indoctrinated into the mindset of “modern” Western supremacy and superiority, as well as the idea of dominating nature, which has been used to perpetuate some very violent and destructive systems.
So, anyway food forest gardens are way better than HGTV style veggie beds, amiright?"
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Formation of Nations 《 sciencedirect.com
Formation of Nations 《 sciencedirect.com
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/formation-of-nations
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/formation-of-nations
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Brad Pitt's Unconventional Hygiene Habit Is Also Totally Relatable
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/brad-pitts-unconventional-hygiene-habit-is-also-totally-relatable.html/
Brad Pitt's Unconventional Hygiene Habit Is Also Totally Relatable
Robin Cortez | MORE ARTICLES
August 3, 2020
Brad Pitt is one of the most well-known names in the entertainment industry. Since he first began acting, the talented star has since taken up the roles of producer and director as well. His fame and success have skyrocketed. But in some ways, Pitt is just like everyone else. See where it all began for Pitt, and find out what unconventional hygiene habit everyone is talking about.
Pitt was born in 1963, and some of his fans and followers may be surprised to learn that his first name is actually “William,” according to IMDb. Over the years the professional actor has come such a long way. The star is known for his striking good looks and compelling performances while on-screen. He first began acting in 1987 on the soap opera Another World. However, with time he ended up landing a tremendous amount of major roles and characters. Fight Club, Moneyball, and Ocean’s Eleven are a few of the legendary films Pitt has been successfully cast in.
Aside from his career, the star is often in the headlines for his romances. For years the world followed the love saga involving Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Aniston. Though there is no arguing his skills and talents, his fans and followers have been discussing him for a different more eccentric reason.
Thanks to social media and the paparazzi, fans are able to indulge in all the exclusive and inside information when it comes to their favorite celebrities. That is how the world learned of Pitt’s unusual sanitation habit.
U
Everyone can probably relate to the struggles and obstacles that come with a busy day or schedule, but Pitt has found a way to oddly, yet efficiently, navigate them.
While filming Inglorious Basterds, Pitt shared with his co-worker that when he doesn’t have time to shower he just uses baby wipes, according to Ranker. It might seem strange at first, but it definitely seems to help Pitt and his pits. Parents can find this all too relatable since baby wipes are essential when it comes to chaos, children, and everything in between.
Pitt was not alone when it came to bizarre and strange quirks and habits, and to be honest, his habits appeared to be on the less extreme side. In the case of Megan Fox, she shared that she almost never flushes the toilet.
Robert Pattinson revealed how much he doesn’t wash his hair. Apparently, Pattinson has gone up to six weeks before giving in.
In the case of Julia Roberts, she has indicated that her decisions to cut back on showering and using deodorants are environment-based. Orlando Bloom also limits washing but when it comes to his clothes.
The most surprising piece of information may have been that Jessica Simpson doesn’t enjoy brushing her teeth and actually chooses to brush them about three times a week.
In reflection, Pitt’s baby wipe habit doesn’t seem too strange in this eclectic and surprising lineup. Though it may not be the most commonly used practice, Pitt confidently believes in the power of baby wipes. Hopefully, Pitt and all of Hollywood’s celebrities will continue to share their unusual and insider information.
[Correction: An earlier version incorrectly said Brad Pitt started acting in 1964.]
Reference:
Brad Pitt's Unconventional Hygiene Habit Is Also Totally Relatable
Robin Cortez | MORE ARTICLES
August 3, 2020
Brad Pitt is one of the most well-known names in the entertainment industry. Since he first began acting, the talented star has since taken up the roles of producer and director as well. His fame and success have skyrocketed. But in some ways, Pitt is just like everyone else. See where it all began for Pitt, and find out what unconventional hygiene habit everyone is talking about.
Brad Pitt | Michael Tran/Getty Images
A look back at Brad Pitt’s journey in the spotlight
Pitt was born in 1963, and some of his fans and followers may be surprised to learn that his first name is actually “William,” according to IMDb. Over the years the professional actor has come such a long way. The star is known for his striking good looks and compelling performances while on-screen. He first began acting in 1987 on the soap opera Another World. However, with time he ended up landing a tremendous amount of major roles and characters. Fight Club, Moneyball, and Ocean’s Eleven are a few of the legendary films Pitt has been successfully cast in.
Aside from his career, the star is often in the headlines for his romances. For years the world followed the love saga involving Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Aniston. Though there is no arguing his skills and talents, his fans and followers have been discussing him for a different more eccentric reason.
What unconventional hygiene habit does Brad Pitt have that is also totally relatable?
Thanks to social media and the paparazzi, fans are able to indulge in all the exclusive and inside information when it comes to their favorite celebrities. That is how the world learned of Pitt’s unusual sanitation habit.
U
Everyone can probably relate to the struggles and obstacles that come with a busy day or schedule, but Pitt has found a way to oddly, yet efficiently, navigate them.
While filming Inglorious Basterds, Pitt shared with his co-worker that when he doesn’t have time to shower he just uses baby wipes, according to Ranker. It might seem strange at first, but it definitely seems to help Pitt and his pits. Parents can find this all too relatable since baby wipes are essential when it comes to chaos, children, and everything in between.
What other celebrities have reputations for their unusual hygiene habits and reputations?
Robert Pattinson revealed how much he doesn’t wash his hair. Apparently, Pattinson has gone up to six weeks before giving in.
In the case of Julia Roberts, she has indicated that her decisions to cut back on showering and using deodorants are environment-based. Orlando Bloom also limits washing but when it comes to his clothes.
The most surprising piece of information may have been that Jessica Simpson doesn’t enjoy brushing her teeth and actually chooses to brush them about three times a week.
In reflection, Pitt’s baby wipe habit doesn’t seem too strange in this eclectic and surprising lineup. Though it may not be the most commonly used practice, Pitt confidently believes in the power of baby wipes. Hopefully, Pitt and all of Hollywood’s celebrities will continue to share their unusual and insider information.
[Correction: An earlier version incorrectly said Brad Pitt started acting in 1964.]
Reference:
Rebecca Shortall (Updated August 2, 20191.5M views) 16 Celebrities With Disgusting Hygiene Habits, https://m.ranker.com/list/celebrities-with-gross-hygiene-habits/rebecca-shortall
Friday, July 31, 2020
Ray Bradbury, FEVER DREAM
https://english-e-reader.net/onlinereader/fever-dream-ray-bradbury
They put him between fresh, clean, laundered sheets and there was always a newly squeezed glass of thick orange juice on the table under the dim pink lamp. All Charles had to do was call and Mom or Dad would stick their heads into his room to see how sick he was. The acoustics of the room were fine; you could hear the toilet gargling its porcelain throat of mornings, you could hear rain tap the roof or sly mice run in the secret walls or the canary singing in its cage downstairs. If you were very alert, sickness wasn't too bad.
He was thirteen, Charles was. It was mid-September, with the land beginning to burn with autumn. He lay in the bed for three days before the terror overcame him.
His hand began to change. His right hand. He looked at it and it was hot and sweating there on the counterpane alone. It fluttered, it moved a bit. Then it lay there, changing color.
That afternoon the doctor came again and tapped his thin chest like a little drum. "How are you?" asked the doctor, smiling. "I know, don't tell me: 'My cold is fine, Doctor, but I feel awful!' Ha!" He laughed at his own oft-repeated joke.
Charles lay there and for him that terrible and ancient jest was becoming a reality. The joke fixed itself in his mind. His mind touched and drew away from it in a pale terror. The doctor did not know how cruel he was with his jokes! "Doctor," whispered Charles, lying flat and colorless. "My hand, it doesn't belong to me any more. This morning it changed into something else. I want you to change it back, Doctor, Doctor!"
The doctor showed his teeth and patted his hand. "It looks fine to me, son. You just had a little fever dream."
"But it changed, Doctor, oh, Doctor," cried Charles, pitifully holding up his pale wild hand. "It did!"
The doctor winked. "I'll give you a pink pill for that." He popped a tablet onto Charles' tongue. "Swallow!"
"Will it make my hand change back and become me, again?"
"Yes, yes."
The house was silent when the doctor drove off down the road in his car under the quiet, blue September sky. A clock ticked far below in the kitchen world. Charles lay looking at his hand.
It did not change back. It was still something else.
The wind blew outside. Leaves fell against the cool window.
At four o'clock his other hand changed. It seemed almost to become a fever. It pulsed and shifted, cell by cell. It beat like a warm heart. The fingernails turned blue and then red. It took about an hour for it to change and when it was finished, it looked just like any ordinary hand. But it was not ordinary. It no longer was him any more. He lay in a fascinated horror and then fell into an exhausted sleep.
Mother brought the soup up at six. He wouldn't touch it "I haven't any hands," he said, eyes shut.
"Your hands are perfectly good," said Mother.
"No," he wailed. "My hands are gone. I feel like I have stumps. Oh, Mama, Mama, hold me, hold me, I'm scared!"
She had to feed him herself.
"Mama," he said, "get the doctor, please, again. I'm so sick."
"The doctor'll be here tonight at eight," she said, and went out.
At seven, with night dark and close around the house, Charles was sitting up in bed when he felt the thing happening to first one leg and then the other. "Mama! Come quick!" he screamed.
But when Mama came the thing was no longer happening.
When she went downstairs, he simply lay without fighting as his legs beat and beat, grew warm, red-hot, and the room filled with the warmth of his feverish change. The glow crept up from his toes to his ankles and then to his knees.
"May I come in?" The doctor smiled in the doorway. "Doctor!" cried Charles. "Hurry, take off my blankets!"
The doctor lifted the blankets tolerantly. "There you are. Whole and healthy. Sweating, though. A little fever. I told you not to move around, bad boy." He pinched the moist pink cheek. "Did the pills help? Did your hand change back?"
"No, no, now it's my other hand and my legs!"
"Well, well, I'll have to give you three more pills, one for each limb, eh, my little peach?" laughed the doctor.
"Will they help me? Please, please. What've I got? "
"A mild case of scarlet fever, complicated by a slight cold."
"Is it a germ that lives and has more little germs in me?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure it's scarlet fever? You haven't taken any tests!"
"I guess I know a certain fever when I see one," said the doctor, checking the boy's pulse with cool authority.
Charles lay there, not speaking until the doctor was crisply packing his black kit. Then in the silent room, the boy's voice made a small, weak pattern, his eyes alight with remembrance. "I read a book once. About petrified trees, wood turning to stone. About how trees fell and rotted and minerals got in and built up and they look just like trees, but they're not, they're stone." He stopped. In the quiet warm room his breathing sounded.
"Well?" asked the doctor.
"I've been thinking," said Charles after a time. "Do germs ever get big? I mean, in biology class they told us about one-celled animals, amoebas and things, and how millions of years ago they got together until there was a bunch and they made the first body. And more and more cells got together and got bigger and then finally maybe there was a fish and finally here we are, and all we are is a bunch of cells that decided to get together, to help each other out. Isn't that right?" Charles wet his feverish lips.
"What's all this about?" The doctor bent over him.
"I've got to tell you this. Doctor, oh, I've got to!" he cried. "What would happen, oh just pretend, please pretend, that just like in the old days, a lot of microbes got together and wanted to make a bunch, and reproduced and made more-"
His white hands were on his chest now, crawling toward his throat.
"And they decided to take over a person!" cried Charles.
"Take over a person?"
"Yes, become a person. Me, my hands, my feet! What if a disease somehow knew how to kill a person and yet live after him?"
He screamed.
The hands were on his neck.
The doctor moved forward, shouting.
At nine o'clock the doctor was escorted out to his car by the mother and father, who handed him his bag. They conversed in the cool night wind for a few minutes. "Just be sure his hands are kept strapped to his legs," said the doctor. "I don't want him hurting himself."
"Will he be all right, Doctor?" The mother held to his arm a moment.
He patted her shoulder. "Haven't I been your family physician for thirty years? It's the fever. He imagines things."
"But those bruises on his throat, he almost choked himself."
"Just you keep him strapped; he'll be all right in the morning."
The car moved off down the dark September road.
At three in the morning, Charles was still awake in his small black room. The bed was damp under his head and his back. He was very warm. Now he no longer had any arms or legs, and his body was beginning to change. He did not move on the bed, but looked at the vast blank ceiling space with insane concentration. For a while he had screamed and thrashed, but now he was weak and hoarse from it, and his mother had gotten up a number of times to soothe his brow with a wet towel. Now he was silent, his hands strapped to his legs.
He felt the walls of his body change, the organs shift, the lungs catch fire like burning bellows of pink alcohol. The room was lighted up as with the flickerings of a hearth.
Now he had no body. It was all gone. It was under him, but it was filled with a vast pulse of some burning, lethargic drug. It was as if a guillotine had neatly lopped off his head, and his head lay shining on a midnight pillow while the body, below, still alive, belonged to somebody else. The disease had eaten his body and from the eating had reproduced itself in feverish duplicate.
There were the little hand hairs and the fingernails and the scars and the toenails and the tiny mole on his right hip, all done again in perfect fashion.
I am dead, he thought. I've been killed, and yet I live. My body is dead, it is all disease and nobody will know. I will walk around and it will not be me, it will be something else. It will be something all bad, all evil, so big and so evil it's hard to understand or think about. Something that will buy shoes and drink water and get married some day maybe and do more evil in the world than has ever been done.
Now the warmth was stealing up his neck, into his cheeks, like a hot wine. His lips burned, his eyelids, like leaves, caught fire. His nostrils breathed out blue flame, faintly, faintly.
This will be all, he thought. It'll take my head and my brain and fix each eye and every tooth and all the marks in my brain, and every hair and every wrinkle in my ears, and there'll be nothing left of me.
He felt his brain fill with a boiling mercury. He felt his left eye clench in upon itself and, like a snail, withdraw, shift. He was blind in his left eye. It no longer belonged to him. It was enemy territory. His tongue was gone, cut out. His left cheek was numbed, lost. His left ear stopped hearing. It belonged to someone else now. This thing that was being born, this mineral thing replacing the wooden log, this disease replacing healthy animal cell.
He tried to scream and he was able to scream loud and high and sharply in the room, just as his brain flooded down, his right eye and right ear were cut out, he was blind and deaf, all fire, all terror, all panic, all death.
His scream stopped before his mother ran through the door to his side.
It was a good, clear morning, with a brisk wind that helped carry the doctor up the path before the house. In the window above, the boy stood, fully dressed. He did not wave when the doctor waved and called, "What's this? Up? My God!"
The doctor almost ran upstairs. He came gasping into the bedroom.
"What are you doing out of bed?" he demanded of the boy. He tapped his thin chest, took his pulse and temperature. "Absolutely amazing! Normal. Normal, by God!"
"I shall never be sick again in my life," declared the boy, quietly, standing there, looking out the wide window. "Never."
"I hope not. Why, you're looking fine, Charles."
"Doctor?"
"Yes, Charles?"
"Can I go to school now?" asked Charles.
"Tomorrow will be time enough. You sound positively eager."
"I am. I like school. All the kids. I want to play with them and wrestle with them, and spit on them and play with the girls' pigtails and shake the teacher's hand, and rub my hands on all the cloaks in the cloakroom, and I want to grow up and travel and shake hands with people all over the world, and be married and have lots of children, and go to libraries and handle books and - all of that I want to!" said the boy, looking off into the September morning. "What's the name you called me?"
"What?" The doctor puzzled. "I called you nothing but Charles."
"It's better than no name at all, I guess." The boy shrugged.
"I'm glad you want to go back to school," said the doctor.
"I really anticipate it," smiled the boy. "Thank you for your help, Doctor. Shake hands."
"Glad to."
They shook hands gravely, and the clear wind blew through the open window. They shook hands for almost a minute, the boy smiling up at the old man and thanking him.
Then, laughing, the boy raced the doctor downstairs and out to his car. His mother and father followed for the happy farewell.
"Fit as a fiddle!" said the doctor. "Incredible!"
"And strong," said the father. "He got out of his straps himself during the night. Didn't you, Charles?"
"Did I?" said the boy.
"You did! How?"
"Oh," the boy said, "that was a long time ago."
"A long time ago!"
They all laughed, and while they were laughing, the quiet boy moved his bare foot on the sidewalk and merely touched, brushed against a number of red ants that was scurrying about on the sidewalk. Secretly, his eyes shining, while his parents chatted with the old man, he saw the ants hesitate, quiver, and lie still on the cement. He sensed they were cold now.
"Good-by!"
The doctor drove away, waving.
The boy walked ahead of his parents. As he walked he looked away toward the town and began to hum "School Days" under his breath.
"It's good to have him well again," said the father.
"Listen to him. He's so looking forward to school!"
The boy turned quietly. He gave each of his parents a crushing hug. He kissed them both several times.
Then without a word he bounded up the steps into the house.
In the parlor, before the others entered, he quickly opened the bird cage, thrust his hand in, and petted the yellow canary, once.
Then he shut the cage door, stood back, and waited.
- THE END -
They put him between fresh, clean, laundered sheets and there was always a newly squeezed glass of thick orange juice on the table under the dim pink lamp. All Charles had to do was call and Mom or Dad would stick their heads into his room to see how sick he was. The acoustics of the room were fine; you could hear the toilet gargling its porcelain throat of mornings, you could hear rain tap the roof or sly mice run in the secret walls or the canary singing in its cage downstairs. If you were very alert, sickness wasn't too bad.
He was thirteen, Charles was. It was mid-September, with the land beginning to burn with autumn. He lay in the bed for three days before the terror overcame him.
His hand began to change. His right hand. He looked at it and it was hot and sweating there on the counterpane alone. It fluttered, it moved a bit. Then it lay there, changing color.
That afternoon the doctor came again and tapped his thin chest like a little drum. "How are you?" asked the doctor, smiling. "I know, don't tell me: 'My cold is fine, Doctor, but I feel awful!' Ha!" He laughed at his own oft-repeated joke.
Charles lay there and for him that terrible and ancient jest was becoming a reality. The joke fixed itself in his mind. His mind touched and drew away from it in a pale terror. The doctor did not know how cruel he was with his jokes! "Doctor," whispered Charles, lying flat and colorless. "My hand, it doesn't belong to me any more. This morning it changed into something else. I want you to change it back, Doctor, Doctor!"
The doctor showed his teeth and patted his hand. "It looks fine to me, son. You just had a little fever dream."
"But it changed, Doctor, oh, Doctor," cried Charles, pitifully holding up his pale wild hand. "It did!"
The doctor winked. "I'll give you a pink pill for that." He popped a tablet onto Charles' tongue. "Swallow!"
"Will it make my hand change back and become me, again?"
"Yes, yes."
The house was silent when the doctor drove off down the road in his car under the quiet, blue September sky. A clock ticked far below in the kitchen world. Charles lay looking at his hand.
It did not change back. It was still something else.
The wind blew outside. Leaves fell against the cool window.
At four o'clock his other hand changed. It seemed almost to become a fever. It pulsed and shifted, cell by cell. It beat like a warm heart. The fingernails turned blue and then red. It took about an hour for it to change and when it was finished, it looked just like any ordinary hand. But it was not ordinary. It no longer was him any more. He lay in a fascinated horror and then fell into an exhausted sleep.
Mother brought the soup up at six. He wouldn't touch it "I haven't any hands," he said, eyes shut.
"Your hands are perfectly good," said Mother.
"No," he wailed. "My hands are gone. I feel like I have stumps. Oh, Mama, Mama, hold me, hold me, I'm scared!"
She had to feed him herself.
"Mama," he said, "get the doctor, please, again. I'm so sick."
"The doctor'll be here tonight at eight," she said, and went out.
At seven, with night dark and close around the house, Charles was sitting up in bed when he felt the thing happening to first one leg and then the other. "Mama! Come quick!" he screamed.
But when Mama came the thing was no longer happening.
When she went downstairs, he simply lay without fighting as his legs beat and beat, grew warm, red-hot, and the room filled with the warmth of his feverish change. The glow crept up from his toes to his ankles and then to his knees.
"May I come in?" The doctor smiled in the doorway. "Doctor!" cried Charles. "Hurry, take off my blankets!"
The doctor lifted the blankets tolerantly. "There you are. Whole and healthy. Sweating, though. A little fever. I told you not to move around, bad boy." He pinched the moist pink cheek. "Did the pills help? Did your hand change back?"
"No, no, now it's my other hand and my legs!"
"Well, well, I'll have to give you three more pills, one for each limb, eh, my little peach?" laughed the doctor.
"Will they help me? Please, please. What've I got? "
"A mild case of scarlet fever, complicated by a slight cold."
"Is it a germ that lives and has more little germs in me?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure it's scarlet fever? You haven't taken any tests!"
"I guess I know a certain fever when I see one," said the doctor, checking the boy's pulse with cool authority.
Charles lay there, not speaking until the doctor was crisply packing his black kit. Then in the silent room, the boy's voice made a small, weak pattern, his eyes alight with remembrance. "I read a book once. About petrified trees, wood turning to stone. About how trees fell and rotted and minerals got in and built up and they look just like trees, but they're not, they're stone." He stopped. In the quiet warm room his breathing sounded.
"Well?" asked the doctor.
"I've been thinking," said Charles after a time. "Do germs ever get big? I mean, in biology class they told us about one-celled animals, amoebas and things, and how millions of years ago they got together until there was a bunch and they made the first body. And more and more cells got together and got bigger and then finally maybe there was a fish and finally here we are, and all we are is a bunch of cells that decided to get together, to help each other out. Isn't that right?" Charles wet his feverish lips.
"What's all this about?" The doctor bent over him.
"I've got to tell you this. Doctor, oh, I've got to!" he cried. "What would happen, oh just pretend, please pretend, that just like in the old days, a lot of microbes got together and wanted to make a bunch, and reproduced and made more-"
His white hands were on his chest now, crawling toward his throat.
"And they decided to take over a person!" cried Charles.
"Take over a person?"
"Yes, become a person. Me, my hands, my feet! What if a disease somehow knew how to kill a person and yet live after him?"
He screamed.
The hands were on his neck.
The doctor moved forward, shouting.
At nine o'clock the doctor was escorted out to his car by the mother and father, who handed him his bag. They conversed in the cool night wind for a few minutes. "Just be sure his hands are kept strapped to his legs," said the doctor. "I don't want him hurting himself."
"Will he be all right, Doctor?" The mother held to his arm a moment.
He patted her shoulder. "Haven't I been your family physician for thirty years? It's the fever. He imagines things."
"But those bruises on his throat, he almost choked himself."
"Just you keep him strapped; he'll be all right in the morning."
The car moved off down the dark September road.
At three in the morning, Charles was still awake in his small black room. The bed was damp under his head and his back. He was very warm. Now he no longer had any arms or legs, and his body was beginning to change. He did not move on the bed, but looked at the vast blank ceiling space with insane concentration. For a while he had screamed and thrashed, but now he was weak and hoarse from it, and his mother had gotten up a number of times to soothe his brow with a wet towel. Now he was silent, his hands strapped to his legs.
He felt the walls of his body change, the organs shift, the lungs catch fire like burning bellows of pink alcohol. The room was lighted up as with the flickerings of a hearth.
Now he had no body. It was all gone. It was under him, but it was filled with a vast pulse of some burning, lethargic drug. It was as if a guillotine had neatly lopped off his head, and his head lay shining on a midnight pillow while the body, below, still alive, belonged to somebody else. The disease had eaten his body and from the eating had reproduced itself in feverish duplicate.
There were the little hand hairs and the fingernails and the scars and the toenails and the tiny mole on his right hip, all done again in perfect fashion.
I am dead, he thought. I've been killed, and yet I live. My body is dead, it is all disease and nobody will know. I will walk around and it will not be me, it will be something else. It will be something all bad, all evil, so big and so evil it's hard to understand or think about. Something that will buy shoes and drink water and get married some day maybe and do more evil in the world than has ever been done.
Now the warmth was stealing up his neck, into his cheeks, like a hot wine. His lips burned, his eyelids, like leaves, caught fire. His nostrils breathed out blue flame, faintly, faintly.
This will be all, he thought. It'll take my head and my brain and fix each eye and every tooth and all the marks in my brain, and every hair and every wrinkle in my ears, and there'll be nothing left of me.
He felt his brain fill with a boiling mercury. He felt his left eye clench in upon itself and, like a snail, withdraw, shift. He was blind in his left eye. It no longer belonged to him. It was enemy territory. His tongue was gone, cut out. His left cheek was numbed, lost. His left ear stopped hearing. It belonged to someone else now. This thing that was being born, this mineral thing replacing the wooden log, this disease replacing healthy animal cell.
He tried to scream and he was able to scream loud and high and sharply in the room, just as his brain flooded down, his right eye and right ear were cut out, he was blind and deaf, all fire, all terror, all panic, all death.
His scream stopped before his mother ran through the door to his side.
It was a good, clear morning, with a brisk wind that helped carry the doctor up the path before the house. In the window above, the boy stood, fully dressed. He did not wave when the doctor waved and called, "What's this? Up? My God!"
The doctor almost ran upstairs. He came gasping into the bedroom.
"What are you doing out of bed?" he demanded of the boy. He tapped his thin chest, took his pulse and temperature. "Absolutely amazing! Normal. Normal, by God!"
"I shall never be sick again in my life," declared the boy, quietly, standing there, looking out the wide window. "Never."
"I hope not. Why, you're looking fine, Charles."
"Doctor?"
"Yes, Charles?"
"Can I go to school now?" asked Charles.
"Tomorrow will be time enough. You sound positively eager."
"I am. I like school. All the kids. I want to play with them and wrestle with them, and spit on them and play with the girls' pigtails and shake the teacher's hand, and rub my hands on all the cloaks in the cloakroom, and I want to grow up and travel and shake hands with people all over the world, and be married and have lots of children, and go to libraries and handle books and - all of that I want to!" said the boy, looking off into the September morning. "What's the name you called me?"
"What?" The doctor puzzled. "I called you nothing but Charles."
"It's better than no name at all, I guess." The boy shrugged.
"I'm glad you want to go back to school," said the doctor.
"I really anticipate it," smiled the boy. "Thank you for your help, Doctor. Shake hands."
"Glad to."
They shook hands gravely, and the clear wind blew through the open window. They shook hands for almost a minute, the boy smiling up at the old man and thanking him.
Then, laughing, the boy raced the doctor downstairs and out to his car. His mother and father followed for the happy farewell.
"Fit as a fiddle!" said the doctor. "Incredible!"
"And strong," said the father. "He got out of his straps himself during the night. Didn't you, Charles?"
"Did I?" said the boy.
"You did! How?"
"Oh," the boy said, "that was a long time ago."
"A long time ago!"
They all laughed, and while they were laughing, the quiet boy moved his bare foot on the sidewalk and merely touched, brushed against a number of red ants that was scurrying about on the sidewalk. Secretly, his eyes shining, while his parents chatted with the old man, he saw the ants hesitate, quiver, and lie still on the cement. He sensed they were cold now.
"Good-by!"
The doctor drove away, waving.
The boy walked ahead of his parents. As he walked he looked away toward the town and began to hum "School Days" under his breath.
"It's good to have him well again," said the father.
"Listen to him. He's so looking forward to school!"
The boy turned quietly. He gave each of his parents a crushing hug. He kissed them both several times.
Then without a word he bounded up the steps into the house.
In the parlor, before the others entered, he quickly opened the bird cage, thrust his hand in, and petted the yellow canary, once.
Then he shut the cage door, stood back, and waited.
- THE END -
posted from Bloggeroid
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Monday, July 27, 2020
Country life: the young female farmer who is now a top influencer in China
Country life: the young female farmer who is now a top influencer in China
Li Ziqi, 29, has garnered millions of followers with her videos of her idyllic life in rural Sichuan. Is she too good to be true?
Since she began posting rustic-chic videos of her life in rural Sichuan province in 2016, Li Ziqi, 29, has become one of China’s biggest social media stars. She has 22 million followers on the microblogging site Weibo, 34 million on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) and another 8.3 million on YouTube (Li has been active on YouTube for the last two years, despite it being officially blocked in China).
Li’s videos – which she initially produced by herself and now makes with a small team – emphasize beautiful countryside and ancient tradition. In videos soundtracked by TRANQUIL flute music, Li crafts her own furniture out of bamboo and dyes her clothing with fruit skins. If she wants soy sauce, she grows the soybeans themselves; a video about making an egg yolk dish starts with her hatching ducklings. The meals she creates are often elaborate demonstrations of how many delicious things can be done with a particular seasonal ingredient, like ginger or green plums.
There is even a Li Ziqi online shop, where fans can purchase versions of the steel “chopper” knife she uses to dice the vegetables she plucks from her plentiful garden, or replicas of the old-fashioned shirts she wears while foraging for wild mushrooms and magnolia blossoms in the misty mountainside.
While she occasionally reveals a behind-the-scenes peek at her process, Li – who did not respond to interview requests for this article – is very private. By all accounts, she struggled to find steady work in a city before returning to the countryside to care for her ailing grandmother (who appears in her videos).
Recently, Li has been thrust into a wider spotlight by the Chinese government, who seem to have realized her soft power potential. In 2018, the Communist party of China named her a “good young netizen” and role model for Chinese youth. In September 2019, the People’s Daily, a CPC mouthpiece, gave Li their “People’s Choice” award, while last month, state media praised Li for helping to promote traditional culture globally, and the Communist Youth League named her an ambassador of a program promoting the economic empowerment of rural youth.
As the government increasingly champions her, Chinese citizens have taken to Weibo to question whether Li’s polished, rather one-dimensional portrayal of farm work conveys anything truly meaningful about contemporary China – especially to her growing international audience on YouTube.
They have a point: Li’s videos reveal as much about the day-to-day labor of most Chinese farmers as the Martha Stewart Show does the American working class. As Li Bochun, director of Beijing-based Chinese Culture Rejuvenation Research Institute told the media last month: “The traditional lifestyle Li Ziqi presents in her videos is … not widely followed.”
In reality, many of China’s rural villages have shrunk or disappeared completely in past decades as the nation prioritized urbanization and workers migrated to cities, with research suggesting the country lost 245 rural villages a day from 2000 to 2010. The 40% of China’s population still living in rural areas encompass a huge diversity of experience, yet life can be difficult, with per-capita rural income declining sharply since 2014 and environmental pollution often as rife as in industrial centers. That’s not to say the beautiful forests and compelling traditions of Li’s videos are not genuine – like many social media creators, she simply focuses on the most charming elements of a bigger picture.
So what do Li’s videos reflect about modern China, if not average daily life in the countryside?
For one, they say something about the mindset of her mainland audience – primarily urban millennials, for whom a traditional culture craze known as “fugu” or “hanfu” has been an aesthetic trend for a number of years.
“Fugu”, according to Yang Chunmei, professor of Chinese history and philosophy at Qufu Normal University, reflects the “romanticized, pastoral” desires of youth “disillusioned by today’s ever-changing, industrial, consumerist society.” In practice, it looks like young people integrating more traditional clothing into their daily looks, watching historical dramas and following rural lifestyle influencers like Li. (While Li is an extremely popular example of the trend, she’s not the only young farmer vlogging in China right now, and outdoor cooking videos of people making meals with wild ingredients and scant equipment are a genre of their own on Douyin.)
Among urban millennials in the west, giving up the nine-to-five grind and living humbly and closer to nature is a popular dream. In China, the contemporary experience of burnout is compounded by the intensity of “urban disease”, an umbrella term for the difficulties of living in megacities like Shanghai or Guangzhou, which can be used to refer to everything from traffic jams and poor air quality to employment and housing scarcity.
Also at play in Li’s popularity is the particular tenor of Chinese wistfulness. “It’s called xiangchou. Xiang means the countryside or rural life, and chou means to long for it, to miss it,” says Linda Qian, an Oxford University PhD candidate studying nostalgia’s role in the revitalization of China’s villages.
“It is quite prevalent for youth living the city life. They get really sick of [the city] so the countryside” – or a fantasy of it – “looks increasingly like the ideal image of what a good life should be.”
Qian also likens Li’s appeal to that of “Man vs Wild”-style entertainment in the west. “We’ve gotten to a certain point of materialism and consumption where there’s only so much you can buy, and we’re like, ‘What other experiences can I have?’” she says. “So we go back to what humans can do.”
Yet as her fame grows internationally, some have questioned, in comments, blogposts and Reddit threads, whether Li’s channel is communist propaganda.
In addition to providing China a form of international PR, Li embodies a kind of rural success the government hopes to generate more of through recent initiatives. With the aim of alleviating rural poverty, the Communist Youth League has embarked on an effort to send more than 10 million urban youth to “rural zones” by 2022, in order to “increase their skills, spread civilization, and promote science and technology”.
“We need young people to use science and technology to help the countryside innovate its traditional development models,” Zhang Linbin, deputy head of a township in central Hunan province, told the Global Times last April.
By using technology to create her own rural economic opportunities while simultaneously championing forms of traditional Chinese culture before a huge audience, Li may seem like a CPC dream come true.
According to Professor Ka-Ming Wu, a cultural anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: “Li represents a new wave of Chinese soft power in that she’s so creative and aesthetically good, and knows how to appeal to a general audience whether they’re Chinese or not.” And yet, “I don’t think this is some kind of engineered effort by the Chinese state,” she says.
Li’s narrative hinges on her failure to thrive in the city; that failure is antithetical to China’s overarching narrative of progress and urban opportunity. Were she a manufactured agent of propaganda, Wu speculates, “[Her failure] is something the Chinese state would never even mention.
“And I think that’s what really fuels her popularity,” says Wu. “That despair of not being able to find oneself in the ‘Chinese dream’. I don’t think she’s propaganda because one of her major successes is that she’s making that failure highly aesthetic … However, the Chinese government is very smart to appropriate her work and say that she represents traditional culture and promote her.”
According to some Chinese media, Li’s content is better than propaganda – doing more to generate genuine domestic, and especially international, interest in rural Chinese traditions than any government initiative of the past decade. “Dozens of government departments with billions at their disposal spent 10 years on propaganda projects, but they have done a worse job than a little girl,” writes the South China Morning Post’s Chauncey Jung, summarizing a tweet from journalist Jasper Jia.
However you feel about Li as a cultural force, her ability to flourish despite a unique set of contradictory circumstances is impressive. Out of the past and present, failure and success, independence and authoritarianism, she’s spun a truly pleasant vision. If only life was really so simple.
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