You Shan Xiansheng: The "Cyber Hermit" Who Made Classical Chinese Literature a Bilibili Blockbuster

You Shan Xiansheng, whose real name is Li Peiran, is a Chinese literature creator and one of the most unconventional figures in Bilibili's knowledge section. Born on November 10, 1999, in Deyang, Sichuan Province, he is a member of the generation Chinese media calls the "post-95s," a cohort that came of age alongside the rise of China's digital platforms. His channel name, which translates as "Mr. You Shan," is a classical-style self-designation that reflects his immersion in traditional Chinese letters, but his public persona is anything but conventional. He is a high school dropout who retreated into the mountains to study ancient texts, worked as an internet café attendant and a cleaner, and then built an audience of over 2.7 million followers on Bilibili by reciting classical Chinese poetry and prose with theatrical intensity in locations ranging from the Gobi Desert to the streets of Tokyo. He has been named to Bilibili's annual Top 100 UP Creator list, and in 2024 he received the platform's "Golden Knowledge Award," the highest honor in Bilibili's knowledge category, for the second consecutive year.

Li Peiran's path to becoming one of China's most recognizable champions of classical literature was neither linear nor conventional. As a child in Deyang, he was required by his parents to memorize the *Three Hundred Tang Poems*, and he developed an early affinity for the rhythm and cadence of classical verse. By middle school, he had committed the *Guwen Guanzhi*, a canonical anthology of classical prose, to memory, and his exceptional aptitude for classical Chinese earned him a special admission to Chengdu No. 7 High School, one of Sichuan's most prestigious secondary institutions. He served as vice president of the school's traditional culture society and was known for his passionate advocacy of classical learning. Yet his academic trajectory diverged sharply from expectation. In 2017, his college entrance examination results were poor, and he chose not to pursue a conventional university path. Instead, he retreated to the mountains of Sichuan for what he describes as a period of semi-seclusion, reading classical texts, attempting to farm, and living in deliberate isolation from urban life. This period, which lasted several years, was formative in ways that are visible throughout his later work. It was also marked by hardship: he worked as an internet café attendant and a cleaner, and he experienced the kind of material precarity that most creators who come from elite academic backgrounds never face. His decision to begin uploading videos to Bilibili in 2020 was, by his own account, a way of sharing the classical literature that had sustained him during those years with an audience that might otherwise never encounter it.

What distinguishes You Shan Xiansheng from virtually every other literature creator on Bilibili is the performative intensity he brings to the recitation of classical texts. He does not simply read ancient poetry; he inhabits it. His videos typically feature him standing in dramatic natural or urban settings—a windswept desert, a mountain peak, a foreign street—declaiming classical Chinese verse with a volume and emotional commitment that fans describe as "wild" and "unhinged." He recites *Li Ling's Reply to Su Wu* in the emptiness of the Gobi, bellows *Nian Nu Jiao: Memories of the Past at Red Cliff* on the banks of the Yangtze, and performs classical laments in the streets of Tokyo and Moscow. His voice, which shifts between standard Mandarin and his native Sichuan dialect, carries the cadence of traditional oral storytelling while remaining unmistakably contemporary in its energy. He has described his method as "using the body to understand the text," and the physicality of his performances—the gestures, the pacing, the volume—is integral to his interpretive approach. His video titles often adopt a similarly provocative register: "Was King Arthur a Real Person or a Literary Invention?" "Why Could Football Only Have Been Born in England?" and "My Fans Are All Ignorant Fools," the last of which he delivered as a deliberate provocation that generated hundreds of thousands of views.

The core of You Shan Xiansheng's creative output is a set of interconnected series that treat the Chinese classical tradition as a living resource rather than a museum exhibit. His "Chinese Literary Giants Illustrated" series, now in its fourth season, uses a systematic framework to evaluate and compare the achievements of major historical writers across dimensions such as poetic craft, political engagement, and moral integrity. A companion series, "Deconstructing the Literary Giants," applies the same analytical rigor to individual figures, with episodes devoted to Cao Cao, Jia Yi, and other canonical authors. His "Immortal Chang'an" project, which he has described as his most ambitious work, reconstructs the cultural and social world of the Tang dynasty capital through the eyes of its poets and officials. He has also produced widely viewed videos on classical calligraphy, the history of the imperial examination system, and the relationship between classical literature and contemporary social issues. His most popular individual videos have accumulated over 27 million views, and his total channel views exceed 500 million, a figure that places him among the most-watched literature creators on the Chinese internet.

You Shan Xiansheng's platform achievements reflect both his popular appeal and the institutional recognition he has earned. His follower count has grown from approximately 1.6 million in 2021 to over 2.7 million as of September 2026. He has been named to Bilibili's Top 100 UP Creator list, and in 2024 he received the Golden Knowledge Award, the platform's highest honor in the knowledge category, for the second consecutive year. His video "Reciting *Song Dongyang Ma Sheng Xu* at a Rural Primary School" won the 2025 Sichuan Positive Energy Online精品 Award, and he has been invited to appear on cultural programs produced by CCTV, Sichuan Television, and Dragon TV. His work has been featured in media outlets including The Paper, which profiled him as a case study in the transformation of classical literature from an elite academic subject into a popular digital genre. In 2023, he relocated from Deyang to Chengdu and established a professional studio with a five-person team, marking a transition from solo creator to institutional operator while maintaining the distinctive creative voice that defines his work.

The broader social value of You Shan Xiansheng's career lies in his demonstration that classical Chinese literature can be genuinely popular among young audiences when it is presented with conviction rather than condescension. The Chinese classical tradition is often taught in schools as a set of texts to be memorized and examined, and it is frequently perceived by students as remote, difficult, and irrelevant to their lives. You Shan Xiansheng's performances offer an alternative model: classical texts as something to be shouted from mountaintops, argued over in comments sections, and used to make sense of contemporary experience. His willingness to express strong opinions, to engage in heated debates with viewers, and to acknowledge his own limitations and failures—including his repeated failure to be selected for Bilibili's Top 100 list before his eventual recognition—has created a relationship with his audience that is unusually intimate and combative. He has been the subject of controversy, including criticism for some of his more provocative statements and his sometimes abrasive interactions with critics, but he has also been praised for his commitment to making classical literature accessible to viewers who might never have encountered it otherwise. For a generation of Chinese young people navigating a rapidly changing society, his work offers a reminder that the past is not a burden to be escaped but a resource to be argued with, reinterpreted, and claimed.

In summary, You Shan Xiansheng represents a model of the creator as a performative scholar, someone who has transformed the recitation of classical Chinese literature into a form of public theater that is simultaneously reverent and irreverent, scholarly and wild. His journey from a high school dropout living in the mountains to a Bilibili Top 100 UP Creator and Golden Knowledge Award winner is a narrative about the value of pursuing an unconventional passion with absolute commitment. His 2.7 million followers, his 500 million total views, and his recognition by both the platform and mainstream cultural institutions are all evidence that his approach has resonated with audiences far beyond the traditional readership for classical literature. For Bilibili, he is a cornerstone of the knowledge section and a demonstration that the platform can support creators who take intellectual and artistic risks. For viewers, he offers a reminder that the classics belong to everyone, and that the most powerful way to honor a tradition is to bring it to life rather than to preserve it in amber.