There is no way out in the petty bourgeoisie’s 'Peach Blossom Land' fantasy.

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Creation: Historical Materialism Group of the Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association

    On the afternoon of November 12th, well-known short video blogger Li Ziqi posted a new video titled “Purple Qi Coming from the East” on her Weibo, marking her first update in three years. The video showcases lacquerware works with carved flowers, purportedly “spreading Chinese excellent traditional culture.” As soon as the short video blogger made her comeback, related news immediately topped Weibo’s hot search list, causing many petty-bourgeois fans to go crazy.

    The popularity of Li Ziqi’s videos has social reasons. With the development of Chinese capitalism, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, the bankruptcy of petty-bourgeoisie has become increasingly severe. They attempt to regress to the era of small-scale production, seeking a comfortable parasitic life. Li Ziqi captures this petty-bourgeois longing for a utopia outside capitalist society by creating various “antique” and “healing” videos, showing herself dressed in landlord-class attire, in picturesque rural landscapes, using “ancient methods” to produce daily necessities or food ingredients, even including thatched huts, swings, forest dressing rooms, and more. Her fans continue to grow rapidly, with over forty million followers on Douyin alone, and her videos on YouTube abroad have hundreds of millions of views, spreading worldwide.

    This social trend is entirely a form of historical regression. Small-scale production is inevitably destroyed by the bourgeoisie, and the idyllic rural life shown in the videos, covering over a hundred acres of land, is actually built on the tears and blood of the working people, only enjoyed by the exploiting class. Lu Xun once commented on another rural poet, Tao Yuanming, whom the current petty-bourgeoisie envies: “He has slaves. During the Han and Jin dynasties, slaves not only served their masters but also farmed and conducted business for them, which were tools for making wealth. So even Mr. Yuanming, he still had some means of making money, otherwise he would have starved to death beside the eastern fence, without wine or food.” Only the bourgeoisie can afford the leisure to spend over twenty pounds of flour learning to make ramen or three months learning woodblock printing, living a hermit-like rural life. All of this is taken from the laboring people. Li Ziqi, through cooperation with capitalists behind Weinian, can earn 780,000 yuan monthly from ads even when videos are paused; the capitalists behind Weinian also extract surplus value from the proletariat through sales: for example, rebranding Wanlong dried fruit products’ osmanthus lotus root powder with Li Ziqi’s trademark can sell 350 grams of osmanthus lotus root powder for 59.7 yuan, a fourfold markup. Some people gain without labor, while others labor without gain. The proletariat producing these foods are constrained by hunger discipline, forced to toil daily just to survive, earning less than 1% of what these people make. To whitewash herself, Li Ziqi claims to come from a working-class family, dropping out of school to work black jobs earning 300 yuan a month, yet absurdly funds others’ education; her six years as a “DJ” in bars from age 14 contradicts this. Even if she is not a second-generation rich, she has further corrupted her mind in the decadent atmosphere of bars, then completely betrayed the working people, thanking capitalists who praise her and enable her to earn tens of millions annually just by filming videos, even acting as a propaganda tool for the Nazi regime, such as being the “Farmer Harvest Festival Promotion Ambassador,” which is actually a traitorous agent of the revisionist faction. She produces batch after batch of spiritual opium that poisons the petty-bourgeoisie, causing them to escape reality and class struggle in the ocean of “healing” videos, suffering under capitalist oppression.

    “Drop illusions, prepare for struggle”, the lifestyle pursued by the petty-bourgeoisie is impossible under capitalist society. Their superstitions can only be exploited by the bourgeoisie like Li Ziqi to deceive and make these people wealthy. The petty-bourgeoisie can only save themselves by participating in the proletarian revolution.

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This idyllic pastoral life is said to be part of China’s traditional culture, but which ancient laborers could have lived such a life? To promote Chinese traditional culture, we should behead these parasitic parasites and properly promote the rebellious culture of Chinese workers.

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It turns out that traditional Chinese culture is DJing. :laughing:

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When a few years ago, various retro styles including Hanfu became popular, I felt strange and always saw them as a rebellious act of teenage youths. But now, the mayor of Hangzhou goes to comic exhibitions, and some corrupt officials in the government treat this cosplay as a political achievement.

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Even with cosplay, the attitude differs. Those young people who wear cosplay with some political significance, like dressing up as Winnie the Pooh or a camera, are taken to the police station to remove their makeup. This superficial peacekeeping, focused only on entertainment, is widespread.

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Indeed, for example, Halloween

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But it seems that Halloween is a bit special in China; it seems that last year there was a similar situation, where it turned into an activity satirizing the Nazis by liberals.

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It’s more like a small exploitative class, after all, small producers don’t have anything like Lizhiqi’s pure entertainment or parasitism, just doing a little bit of farm work for show.

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It’s so disgusting, aggressively promoting this bourgeois lifestyle. Truly, the working people have no time for these pleasures. Zhongxiu shamelessly boasts that this promotes traditional culture, but in reality, it just propagates the decadent pleasures of the exploiting class.

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Not planting crops, but still a farmer, it’s too ridiculous

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Li Ziqi is a farmer, not a peasant.

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The Zhongxiu government seems to like this kind of dog stuff.
Not only did they put Li on the People’s Daily, but they also used her as material for students to memorize in bourgeois schools, constantly praising her as “a person who rose from adversity (because she hasn’t posted a video for three years, allegedly due to conflicts with Wei Nian).” The People’s Daily said “after returning, she is still the white moonlight.” The homeroom teacher mentioned in the class meeting that the grade heavily printed comments about Li, and the old nine said it could be used as material for “culture, pastoral, relaxation.” It’s basically putting gold on a rotten wall.
On one hand, Zhongxiu uses her to promote petty bourgeois ideology; more importantly, she is promoting the so-called “excellent traditional Chinese culture,” which is also a sign of running out of ideas.

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:+1:

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