If you need to just relax and peacefully zone out while watching someone be silently capable, I have the YouTube channel for you.
李子柒(opens in a new tab), very roughly translated as Seven Plums, is a newer YouTube channel that features a Chinese woman calmly, confidently creating everything she needs basically from scratch.
The channel is very similar to the popular Primitive Technology(opens in a new tab) account because each video only contains her silently making something from the barest essentials. The difference is that Seven Plums specializes in lifestyle videos, wherein she makes her own paper, makeup from flowers, and even her own dye for a dress out of grape skins.
She also uploads a lot of cooking videos, but, again, they are silent and contemplative. They aren’t about learning to make a meal. They are about watching how a meal can be made.
She also makes everything using only rudimentary tools, and nothing with electricity. Besides the camera, of course. Even when making a dress, she uses a foot-powered sewing machine. Seven Plums seems to live in a place removed from modern life, which is surely what makes watching her videos so peaceful.
Seven Plums is very popular in China. She has almost a million Weibo followers and regularly shares other videos and information about how they were made.
She only launched her YouTube channel last August, but since then she has had millions of views.
Unfortunately, my inability to understand Chinese makes it hard to find the particular details of her and her life hard on the internet. So I don’t really know who she is, or how she began. I found one story(opens in a new tab) written about her, but Google Translate was not kind to it, and I learned nothing.
But the lack of translation also acts as a delightful way to further enjoy Seven Plums’ videos. Without being able to read the video titles or the descriptions, you don’t really know what she’s making at the beginning. Watching the process is the only way to fully see what she will create. Sure, you could turn to Google, but let yourself have some surprises in life.
Still, I can totally see Seven Plums’ channel as yet another hyper-glamorized lifestyle in the self-involved blogger vein, meant to stoke unattainable expectations and envy. And it sort of is.
There’s no way this woman lives like this. But, I really don’t care. It’s extremely nice to watch patiently shot videos of someone confidently and efficiently showing off their own mastery.
And she made an outdoor patio.
She also has a very playful dog and a cow that she puts flower garlands on sometimes.
So, if you need a break from the world, loud noises, bad YouTubers, etc., please watch Seven Plums. You will almost certainly think to yourself, “Ahhh, this is nice.”
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I have done neat stuff all over these United States from sailing lessons on the Puget Sound to motorcycle maintenance on the backroads of upstate New York. My professional experience extends from newspaper reporting in the mountains of Eastern Oregon to fixing espresso machines throughout Kentucky. I also have kept a cat alive for 10 years.