Lights, camera, tractors!

Leave it to the prose

Not far away, in Mengyin county, another form of rural creativity is taking root in a farmer's notebook.

Lyu Yuxia, 54, is known online as Yimeng Second Sister, a name she uses because she is the second child in her family.

With calloused hands and a sun-weathered face, she has gained unexpected attention online for her poems. "I'm just an ordinary farmer, but words have always been with me," she said.

In the spring of 2023, Lyu walked up a mountain to pick Chinese toon sprouts. She looked out over a sea of blooming peach blossoms across the terraced hillsides.

The sight moved her deeply. She took out her phone, held up a bunch of toon sprouts, and recited a poem she had written in her notebook. That video, posted on Douyin, gained 100,000 followers in one week.

Several of her poems written, recited and recorded in the fields quickly gained widespread popularity online. In one of them, she compared the falling snow to icing sugar and salt sprinkled from the sky.

"I was a 50-something farm woman with wrinkles all over my face, feeling insecure at first," she recalled. "Now I am confident. Poetry gave me the courage to be myself."

Some online commenters have questioned whether her poetic portrayal of rural life is too idyllic and doesn't show the hardship of farming.

"Doesn't the hardship show right here?" she said, pointing at her weathered face.

"Every farmer's face tells the story of sun and wind, of sweat and toil. That's a given. What I want to capture is the other side, the hope and the expectation," she added.

"Every spring, we plow the soil, we plant the seeds. We don't know if the weather will favor us. But the moment we put those seeds in the ground, we are hoping for a good harvest.

"This is the faith in tomorrow. I write to celebrate that achievement," she said.

Her connection to literature began early. When she was very young, her father often told her stories.

At 15, she went to work in a textile factory. To block out the drone of the machinery, she recalled poems she had memorized, including those written by Li Bai, Su Dongpo, and even the elegy from Dream of the Red Chamber.

She bought magazines and filled notebooks with excerpts and original verses. "My world was too small. But through sharing online, my world got wider and wider. The beautiful words that netizens leave in my comments are as joyful to me as reading a good book," she said.

Lyu has started livestreaming from her orchard, selling not only her peaches but also helping fellow villagers market their produce. On the busiest days, she livestreams for nine hours straight, sometimes skipping meals.

"When I see the orders pile up and help people sell their goods, there's nothing happier than that," she said.