Further discussion:The phenomenon of “Li Ziqi”

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难词探意

1. utopia /juː'təʊpiə/ n. 理想社会；乌托邦

2. utensil /juː'tensl/ n. 器皿；用具

Online celebrities, usually, are famous for their gorgeous appearances, or appealing songs and dances. Recently, a girl, however, has won a great number of fans through presenting traditional Chinese dishes from a unique perspective. She is Li Ziqi, who has 7 million watchers on YouTube and more than 2 million micro-bloggers on Sina Weibo.

Why did Ziqi's videos gain so much attention in such a short time?Maybe there are a couple of dominant reasons.

What Li has shot is the life experience inutopia: In an elegant traditional hanfu, she appears in a place, surrounded by a landscape with an old-fashioned attractiveness—all-natural ingredients, simple and practical cookingutensilsand traditional yet retro cooking steps that fascinate her audience deeply. Her videos with an ancient style are eye-catching and entertaining, which enable people living in a busy life to relax.

She and her team prefer showing the whole process from the field to the table, which is really educational. People, especially children can learn where their food come from and how it is transformed into various tasty meals. For example, in her video about spicy tofu, she starts with harvesting the soybeans, grinding them into powder and making the powder into tofu, then to cook it; In another video clip about soy sauce, she shows how to plant the soybean in the field. Her works also include building a home-made oven to bake bread.

Although Li Ziqi has made a great contribution to transmission of Chinese culture, many people are doubtful whether her work is a kind of cultural export. They argue that her videos are about daily life, and therefore she is not a symbol of Chinese culture. However, what she has done indeed shows to her audience the traditional Chinese pastoral life and the process of Chinese food production, as well as fully explains the Chinese people's traditional concept of family, the Taoist thought of harmony between man and nature.

It is unnecessary to debate whether Li's videos are cultural export or not. She lets the world know and love Chinese culture; that's all. Just like the name of her series of videos—The Spring Kitchen, Chinese culture will be thriving and booming in the future, and hope Li can bridge the culture between China and foreign countries.

Reading Check

Answer the following questions according to the text.

1. According to the passage, why are Li Ziqi's videos so popular?

2. Why do people have arguments about cultural export?

3. What's your opinion of this phenomenon and cultural export?

Language Study

Sentence for writing

Although Li Ziqi has made a great contribution to transmission of Chinese culture, many people are doubtful whether her work is a kind of cultural export.

【信息提取】本句中的make a great contribution to... 意为“对……做出巨大贡献”。 我们需要注意的是to的词性，在该短语中，to为介词，后面只能加名词词性成分，即名词（短语）或者动名词。

【句式仿写】很多博物馆对艺术品的保存做出了巨大的贡献。