With the proliferation and development of cultural and creative industries in China, the Internet plus economy has turned millions of Chinese young people as digital prosumers and entrepreneurs online (Chen, 2018). Multi-channel network (MCN) has become a new business model to scout, train, package and promote online micro-celebrities into ‘natural and authentic’ spokespersons for commerce and self-branded products and services, who have garnered comparable influence against their counterparts in the traditional entertainment industries (Abidin, 2018). Initially, as a non-commercial endeavour, the UGC (under generated content) gradually become PGC (professional generated content) and converged with the booming social media platforms (Chen, 2018). This paper focuses on one such micro-celebrities on multiple platforms, Li Ziqi, and the online discourses surrounded her and her works with a central theme on the rural China. A mixed reception on China’s largest self-media portal, WeChat, has linked her work as a ‘cultural diplomacy’ and ‘cultural exporting’ endeavour which generates cultural power (Keane & Fung, 2018) so as to legitimise her business and counter the criticisms raised by her anti-fans across China. Through examining multiple and complicated discourses regarding Li, I argue that even though the international reception is predominately positive, it is largely fuelling a (self-)orientalist depiction of China, in particular, an idyll, mysterious, soft and feminine rural China packaged and captured by a capitalist and consumerist logic. The nostalgia and yawning towards a rural lifestyle is shared among both domestic and international viewers and works as therapeutic symbolic texts to dissolve the anxieties caused by the unfinished project of modernity. Paradoxically, the domestic discourses divided phenomenally, on the one hand, highly celebrated and welcomed by male Chinese users and hijacked Li as part of the performative patriotism, nationalism, and fantasy towards the traditional Chinese beauty; on the other, attracted online criticism, if not trolling, from business competitors and female Chinese users, questioning the authenticity of her works. The author argues that a copyrighted patriotism and exquisitely packaged soft China reflects the divided and converged (thus paradoxical) stances on the patriarchal patriotism and misogyny on Chinese social media. The analyses also contribute to the theme of “building inclusiveness, respect and reciprocity and how the “moe (cute and budding) and no-harm” persona is the new currency in stimulating affects and attracting audiences from different cultural backgrounds.