Let’s watch the video first.
Makes you feel better, doesn’t it?
The woman’s name is Dianxi Xiaoge, the dog’s name is Da Wang. They live in Yunnan in China. I’ve been following her videos on Facebook for months, and they always make me feel better about my day. I don’t watch for the recipes – there is no way I am cooking pine flowers. There is just something calm and tranquil about it.
There is some debate about the videos being genuine or this or that. I don’t care, so if you want to inform me that she is a government plant or alien from outer space, don’t tell me. Her videos make me happy. 🙂
Dianxi Xiaoge Youtube, Facebook, and Interview Video.
Here you go, a little bit of zen for your day.
If you love her, you would probably also like Li Ziqi! Here’s a link: https://youtu.be/9rA074yXyfw
She’s a cook, a carpenter, a seamstress and a million other things, and her videos are lovely to watch!
Oh I love her videos too! They are so calming on top of being super interesting! 🙂
I love her stuff. The videos are stunning.
Yes! I love her. She is so calming. I think she’s now got her own business selling pre packaged traditional food that is doing quite well!!
YES! The first video if hers I watched was of her making mapo tofu. It was a revelation. She continues to amaze me. Plus the mountain backdrop is gorgeous too.
I loooove her too! It’s just so calming!
She is exactly the one I was going to recommend. I love her videos. Interesting comparison. Both young women, both with a grandmother, both apparently live on a farm . . . I don’t care either. 🙂 They make me feel so peaceful.
Hah, just popped in to jump on the Li Ziqui bandwagon. Talk abut Zen!
I love watching Lizi Qi too! Her videos are atmospheric and her gardens are sometimes an additional character. =)
I follow both of these amazing young women- and yes, they are a joy to follow!
Definitely going to subscribe to her channel! ?☺️
I came here JUST to rec Li Ziqi!
I was just about to recommend her too! So calming ❤️
I was just going to recommend her! You beat me to it! I love her videos!
I totally understand the feeling. I like to watch cooking videos from just one cookbook because they are just so soothing. I’ll watch videos for things I can’t even eat because it’s peaceful. And this guy: https://youtu.be/cofNVuXgjsA Jun is so calm and it’s super relaxing. And it’s great watching him interact with his cats while cooking. I mean he made a whole fancy meal for one cat for his birthday! He has wonderful cooking videos.
I love Jun and Rachel’s videos. Their travel videos are really fun too. Poke, Nagi, and Haku are the best cats (don’t tell my cats I said that ?).
Ryoya Takashima from Peaceful Cuisine is also great. I like the no music version of his cooking videos but mostly really appreciate how game he is for learning new things. The dude is currently making a cello…
Those potatoes come out of the ground awfully clean-looking. Fantasy garden potatoes.
How clean your potatoes come out depends on the soil and how deep they’ve gotten. I stick mine in a trench and cover with straw. Don’t even have to dig for them. Leave the plants alone and they will continue to produce until the season is over and they die back.
She is obviously not allergic to tree pollen. I think my allergies flared up just watching her pick the pine flowers!
(And her dog made me happy. I’d watch just for that dog.)
100% on the allergies flaring up watching that video. I just about sneezed 5 times watching it!!! and that floof is magestic
Gosh yes! Tree pollen sneezes. But really pretty to watch!
The food looks amazing. I can’t wait for Hugh and Elara to go to Asia.
Thassa *big* dog.
That dog though! Also can we talk about how much effort and time she put into that meal? It was like thanksgiving level prep for a seemingly any day meal. Also it was aesthetic af. Pardon my French.
My family has some very plain food only ideas, and I have basically quit trying new things. That was a ton of potato dishes. It was relaxing.
I love her and the videos soo much!
I’ve also been watching both Dianxi Xiaoge and Li Ziqi ‘s YouTube channel’s for months. I love them both, and also envy them for their ability to cook (while making me drool). If there ever is an apocalypse, they’ll both be able to survive just fine.
It is good to find things that make you happy. Thank you for sharing this, it has a nice relaxing quality to it. I wonder what Quillonian from the Innkeeper series would think of the cooking techniques? 🙂
Oh, yes! Just one sentence about Orro watching Chinese cooking videos. Then about 7 chapters later, have him serve the dish. A very inside joke for the BDH! Or perhaps in the KD world, have a shapeshifter watch for both the calming effect and the food. All shapeshifters are foodies, after all. Maybe Dali? Or possibly Derek or Barabas?
Christopher!
The pine flower cake episode was jaw-dropping (my pollen allergies were screaming quietly in the background). I so crave that BIG WOK!
Thanks for sharing. Loved it! Here’s my contribution. It’s a lovely Asian woman who picks, cuts, and styles bamboo into furniture.
https://youtu.be/LTejJnrzGPM
Wow. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks!! I didn’t know she had an interview video. Now I know why she set up her cooking channel. Her videos are not only peaceful, with a very cute doggy, but as she herself said, the Yunnan recipes are indeed different (similarish yet different).
So her family home in the Yunnan village is clean, meticulously kept and beautified, to increase the aesthetics for viewers. Nothing wrong with that. She had use traditional implements to prepare the meals, even if it is for the videos, that effort is genuine enough for me. It takes a long time and elbow grease to prepare it that way!
It’s very ASMR. The sound effects are very deliberately layered over the video and enhanced. Actually I stopped watching and just listened for a while. But MAN that wok. That’s the real real real deal there. Makes me want to build one in the backyard.
???
I don’t even *have* allergies and watching this nearly made me sneeze. Can’t imagine eating it. Heck, in all honesty, I’ve never even heard of anyone doing so. Hmm. TIL.
That’s another one where I think, huh, who thought those would taste good and figured out how to make that true?
I just want that big wok for my kitchen!!!!
That was very soothing. Made me feel like when I look at Vermeer’s Milkmaid.
ACHOO! That would be a huge no on the pine flowers for me. I could definitely feel the calm even with all that pollen about.
You found her too! And how do you define “real”? Is it a really beautiful video? I don’t care how much work went into making it, but that she, they were good enough to create these lovely videos. I find them fascinating, even knowing this is an idealized version of traditional ways.
If you like cooking channels you might like Jun’s Kitchen as well. He has cats and often gets veg and rice from his uncle’s farm. They don’t post super often but the videos are nice and relaxing.
Wow. Thanks! I really enjoyed watching her videos!!
Wow. Thanks! I really enjoyed watching her videos!!
Maybe it’s the music. It’s like music from a Miyazaki film, which always makes me feels like I’m in an 18th century Fragonard painting set in the countryside except it’s Asia. There’s lots of nature and the food is fresh and not from a box. And the dog is great–Da Wang means Big King and he is big.
I love your description. Very yes.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCazay-C-shtEEUO78ObKGJg
HAEGREENDAL
☝️ I just started following her for the same reason. She is from South Korea. You will most definitely enjoy her videos as they are very calming and positive. Some even have English subtitles. ?☺️
Thanks for sharing! Enjoyed the videos and shared with my daughter as she likes cooking.
I am not sure how i stumbled upon my current favorite channel as it is not my normal viewing. But I strongly recommend Curiosity Incorporated. I stared with a post called “I bought a horder house” it was nothing like it sounds. The host owns an antique store and much like American Pickers he travels to find treasures. He is so nice, like decent nice. He once spent days hunting down a homeless man that sold him a picture that had been found in a dumpster. Alex gave him 20.00 with no expectations but sold it for 5000.00 so he went hunting to give the man half the profit. The house was the home of a famous Canadian Potter. Alex spent 4 months going through and finding wonders and fixing it up. We met Mary (the now 98 yr old potter). It is fascinating. The series is called The Potter House.
It may trigger germaphobes at some stages. Mary became overwhelmed. Do not expect ridicule or shaming. This show is about the positive and saving treasures from the landfill. Warning … dad jokes abound.
There’s a YT channel for a Japanese cleaning crew for hoarder/neglected homes. Not for germaphobes but entirely satisfying how they’re able to kill massive amounts of mildew which is the bane of many Japanese homes in summer.
He sounds like such a nice person. I think I’m going to watch those videos! Need more niceness in my life lately. Thanks for the rec.
I’m not sure if it makes me feel zen or not, but it definitely made me hungry!
Yunnan is the region of China my mom’s side of the family is from. I’ll have to show her and see what she says. Yunnan region cooking, is broken down into 5-6 more micro regions. The food is yummy!
Holy. Merde.
https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCQG_fzADCunBTV1KwjkfAQQ
Thanks for the link. Wow. Just wow. That is some income.
I feel the same way about BTS videos/music, especially the newer album. Since I can’t speak Korean, the music is just about the vibes.
First: I want the dog. A big ole huge ole fluffy ole dog. LOVE HIM
Second: I watched this. I am now heading to my kitchen to do something amazing with potatoes. thank you for opening up the possibilities.
Ehhhh…not really relaxing for me, the music couldn’t hide the amount of work she was doing…the start of the first video took me back when I had to help my grandmother pick crops (for money)…it was hard work, hot, tiring, and the bags were so heavy. The cooking wasn’t as bad (since I don’t cook!)
Those potatoes come out of the ground awfully clean-looking. Fantasy garden potatoes.
Lovely to watch, but I feel kinda inadequate now! There is no way I’m picking my food before I cook it. I too lust for that wok. Actually, I really want that steamer!
I grew up with a steamer pretty close to that size? Depending on where you are, it might not be that hard to find – or use.
I covet her wok & kitchen. Maybe in my next life. Of course now I want potatoes in all those forms but I’m allergic. It was a very calming video.
I am probably sending this to my sister, for kind of the inverse reason – we have closely related allergies, and there isn’t anything in there she can’t eat. (I can’t eat the cabbage, rape seed oil or other mustard related stuff. Not that it wouldn’t be fairly easy to work around.) Since most grains are out – including rice – this is a rarity 🙂
I also watch her videos!!!! I would love to try some of the recipes but it would be hard to get all the ingredients.
Mmm. Yeah, things are looking up.
(To be fair, I keep not eating enough, because I still haven’t really stocked the kitchen at the new place. I got pulled into a surprise meeting this morning, by the time I got back it was late, and raining, and… well, let’s just say having ribs delivered also made my life a lot better.)
I’ve been kicking around collecting things to do more outside cooking – I was thinking a kamado and maybe an induction wok (new place is passive solar, but cooking inside when it’s really hot outside isn’t going to help it stay cool)… Chrrrr… (This is all very theoretical, I mean, I have a functional kitchen, but almost none of my furniture is here yet?)
(I’m too loopy to be writing. What I was trying to say – oh, this both gives me ideas and makes it all seem out of reach.)
Oh, wow. I needed that this morning. So relaxing. [happy sigh]
I would have chopped my fingers off with that big cleaver! I wonder how long that took her in real-time!
I love you and hate you right now, Ilona, just watched 20+ vids in a row, completely addicting. So lovely to watch, thank you for sharing!!!
If you get too zen’d out and need a pick-me-up, try this (violin in the Swiss Alps): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUfxjEI33ts
Asian peoples can do the most with the least. In a lot of Western kitchens, all that chopping would have been done with at least three different knives. I remember my Mom using her cleaver just like that.
I love her dog. Reminds me of the fluffy Akitas I had.
You should watch Lizi Qi as well her show is very similar.
Cooking with a shovel. And made it look easy! I like farm to table cooking, try to do so when I can. (I can hear the zucchinis growing)
Those are the cleanest potatoes I have ever seen come out of the ground. lol!