Heaven – Made in China: Optical shop owner learns AI painstakingly, gets fame as video goes viral

A white jade bridge stretching into the clouds, towering heavenly palaces with tall, curved roofs, and cranes flying between temples that float on clouds. That’s a visual display of heaven for you, the twist being that this heaven has a traditional Chinese look, and is made in China. From the architecture of palaces and temples to flowing robes, the Chinese aesthetics is palpable everywhere. And why not, as it is an AI-generated video of heaven made by a Chinese man.

The AI-generated video of less than a minute has been shared online by viewers across the world and has garnered more than 5 million views across social platforms in less than four days.

Most social media users assumed it to be a creation of a film studio or a professional 3D animation team. In reality, it has been created by an optical shop owner named Qi Guang, who learned AI image and video generation on his own over two years, making best use of the spare time he had when there were no customers.

New trend ‘handcraft’ economy spreading in China

Qi Guang’s overnight fame is not an isolated internet success story. A new trend, named the ‘handcraft’ economy is spreading in China. It is used to describe the process of bringing ideas to fruition by hand on a small scale while using simple tools and relying on individual skill or manual labour rather than industrial production lines.

The hashtag ‘Hand-Crafting Everything’ has surpassed 100 million views on Chinese social media.

Solo developers are launching AI-powered tools in app stores, competing directly with products backed by tech giants. The low cost, high creative freedom, and fragmented workflow are redefining entrepreneurship.

Few viewers of Qi Guang’s viral celestial video could make out it wasn’t a creation of a studio but had been crafted after hundreds of discarded attempts.

Creator Qi Guang had a fascination for mythology

Qi Guang told the Global Times that he had a fascination for everything grand and ethereal in Chinese mythology and envisioned the celestial palaces and floating realms mentioned in the ancient texts.

“I realised AI could break down the barriers for ordinary people. The images I had held in my mind for so long could finally become visible,” Qi Guang said.

He started learning text-to-image and image-to-video conversion on AI tools.

The creation of the now viral video was far more painstaking. Qiguang first conceptualised images, the overall atmosphere and camera movement.

‘Had to tweak prompts innumerable times’

Then he generated high-quality static images for each frame by using an AI image generation tool, for which he had to tweak his prompts innumerable times to get the architectural details, colours, lighting and composition he wanted. Next, he fed the selected images into AI video-generation models to add dynamic lens effects. After tedious editing and merging clips, he finally picked music to match the mood.

“AI frequently produces garbled architecture, deformed figures, or unnatural motion,” Qi Guang said.

"You envision something perfect in your mind, but after dozens of generations, you still haven't transformed your vision into reality."

“You can begin with just one person and a single computer, turning ideas directly into content or products. Heavy upfront investment disappears, yet every tedious task, every round of trial and error, falls solely on the creator,” Qi Guang said.