Fan Zihe, known by her social media name Cleopatra, speaks fluent Chinese after being taken in by the couple and has been praised by followers for staying in the rural community where the family lived.
Despite modelling contracts in the big city, she remained in her hometown, a rural area near Ruzhou which is a county-level city in the west-central part of China’s Henan Province, where the family took her after they returned from Pakistan.
Now, at 20, she has amassed 750,000 followers on Douyin, China’s TikTok, and people are amazed at her fluent Chinese despite her non-Chinese appearance.
Her adoptive parents discovered her in a cardboard box on the street in Pakistan while they were working in the country.
The couple brought her back to China and named her Fan Zihe, an auspicious name meaning “vigorous and long-lived.” She remains their only child.
Fan first attracted attention on social media in 2021 when she posted a video of herself eating traditional Henan noodles while squatting in front of her village house.
She has been dubbed “Henan’s Cleopatra,” although her online content is far from glamorous. It shows her farming, eating noodles, and asking for lucky money from the family’s elderly, reflecting the normal daily life of a girl in a rural community.
Fan said her parents have always treated her as their biological daughter and defended her whenever people said she looked different.
Fan, who identifies as Chinese, said she was grateful that her parents gave her a home and have always treated her like their biological daughter.
She said she wants to buy them a flat in the city to repay them, adding: “People say loving a person is like growing a flower.
“I think the best gardeners are my parents.”
She told a Henan media outlet, Pingdingshan News, that she earns CNY 4,000 (GBP 437) a month from her Douyin account, more than the average Chinese farmer’s monthly salary, which was CNY 1,678 (GBP 183) in 2022.
