Sesame Flatbread Poet Mu Yumei: In the AI Era, I'm Not Anxious—AI Can't Write the Pain of My Feet Sunk in the Mud

On September 11, on the stage of the Shanghai Bund Conference, 55-year-old "shaobing poet" Mu Yumei stood in the spotlight as several hundred people in the audience listened to her talk about how she sells shaobing, how she writes poetry, and how she views AI. In her twenties, Mu Yumei left her hometown in Anhui alone to work in Shenzhen. She worked on factory assembly lines, collected scrap, and did cleaning jobs. Later, through her own trial and error, she learned to make shaobing and sold them on the street for more than a decade. It was also beside that steaming shaobing stall, late at night when her family was asleep, that she—who had not seriously picked up a pen for years—took up paper and pen again and wrote the sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and spice of life into poem after poem. While preparing the PPT for her on-site speech, a tech volunteer had originally put this sentence on it: "I will never surrender the right to express myself." Mu Yumei looked at the line, muttered it a few times, and felt it was a bit stiff, not quite like her usual way of speaking. She stood there, paused, and then, following the two things most familiar to her from half a lifetime, blurted out: "How to make shaobing, how to write poetry—my life, I decide." And so this ordinary working woman, her palms covered in calluses, walked onto a stage about the most cutting-edge technology. To this day, Mu Yumei still cannot use the complex functions of a smartphone and still does not understand those new AI apps that have become all the rage. But when life handed her a "fantastical adventure," she walked right into it without hesitation. Now Mu Yumei has returned to the familiar shaobing stall, kneading dough, sticking cakes into the oven, and writing down the lines of poetry that belong to her. Life seems no different, yet it truly is different. Mu Yumei speaks at the 2026 Inclusion·Bund Conference "Digital Mulan" conference. Photo courtesy of the interviewee. An accidental "crossover" It had been some time since she returned from Shanghai, and Mu Yumei had not yet had the time—nor was she in a hurry—to judge exactly how big a role AI could play in her writing in the future: if it can help, try using it; if it is not useful, do not force it. "I don't force AI, and I don't force myself." Mu Yumei's contact with these advanced technologies has not been smooth. The first time she owned a smartphone was more than ten years ago. It was a secondhand phone her husband bought for 300 yuan. At first, she only knew how to use it to make calls, send WeChat messages, and occasionally browse Toutiao. She liked reading short articles and poems online, but she did not like taking photos and did not know how to post on Moments. To her, the phone was just a screen that could display text. Last year, Mu Yumei took part in a writing event at Qianhai Park in Shenzhen. After her poems were reported by the media, they quickly attracted widespread attention. Someone excitedly messaged her: "Sister Mu, you're trending!" Mu Yumei was baffled: "What's trending?" Only after the other person explained with great effort did she understand. It was also from then on that she began to have more contact with online media, and a thought gradually emerged in her mind: "Could I try making my own short-video account?" But reality soon poured cold water on this bold attempt. The first time she posted on Douyin, Mu Yumei, not understanding the platform's rules, uploaded the same video repeatedly. Before long, a system notification popped up on her phone telling her it was "suspected of violating the rules." Mu Yumei was terrified. She thought she had made a huge mistake and sat blankly in her room all day, not even daring to touch her phone. Previously, from downloading the software to shooting the videos, others had helped her step by step. What for young people was a tiny operation requiring only a flick of the fingers felt to her like an insurmountable wall. Later, she kept trying and also shared poetry, but found that the view counts were unusually low, which somewhat discouraged her. After going around in circles, she finally returned to the thing most familiar in her daily life—shaobing. Since shaobing was what she was truly good at, and people had indeed enjoyed watching her share such content before, she decided to make videos teaching people how to make shaobing. Now her account has gradually gathered more than a thousand followers, and she has begun to wonder whether she can sell products there to earn some money. Mu Yumei takes part in a writing event at Qianhai Park in Shenzhen. Photo courtesy of the interviewee. It was also through this kind of exploration that AI came before Mu Yumei. In July this year, her friend Ding Dang, who works at the public welfare organization Green Rose, approached her and said that the "Digital Mulan" project initiated by the Ant Foundation was planning an AI workshop and asked whether she would be interested in joining. At the time, Mu Yumei had only an extremely vague concept of AI and simply felt that "learning AI is a very trendy and impressive thing." She thought the workshop would teach everyone how to edit videos, and with the mindset of "learning some new technology and coming back to run my Douyin account well," she carefully filled out the registration form. But when she arrived on site, the situation was somewhat different from what she had imagined. The tech volunteers did not rush to teach her various technical operations. Instead, they sat around her and asked her again and again: "What do you most want to do?" At first, Mu Yumei was somewhat at a loss, rubbing the hem of her clothes nervously with both hands. Later, under everyone's encouraging gaze, she slowly revealed what was in her heart: in daily life, shining ideas often suddenly popped into her head, but because she was busy with work, she had no way to write them down in time; sometimes, when there was clearly a very complete and very moving feeling in her mind, it often came out wrong once it landed on paper. She wanted a tool that could talk with her, help her record material, and give her a little prompt when she could not express herself. So, after reading her poems, three tech volunteers began developing a small AI tool called "Fireworks Poetry" around her needs. But as soon as the product took shape, the two sides quickly had a clash of ideas. The tech volunteers hoped this AI tool could truly become a helper in Mu Yumei's daily writing, and they even customized practical features such as voice input specifically for her; but after Mu Yumei tried it, she felt that "it's still more convenient to write with pen and paper." In her view, writing poetry inherently requires this process: only when the pen lands on paper do her thoughts truly settle. The tech volunteers were stunned. After talking with her, they gradually realized that Mu Yumei was not resistant to new technology, but that right now they really needed to think carefully about exactly how AI should enter her life. In the end, they gradually reached a consensus: not to change Mu Yumei's writing habits, but to let AI become a "conversational" tool. AI can provide recording, prompts, and companionship, but it cannot decide what she writes, and even less can it replace her judgment about life. "I can't possibly become a skilled AI user all at once just because I joined this project," Mu Yumei said. She still prefers to record life with paper and pen, still is not very good at using apps on her phone, and the newly developed little "Fireworks Poetry" tool is still in the exploratory stage. This process also made Mu Yumei truly understand her relationship with AI for the first time. "What matters is thinking clearly about what exactly I need AI to help me do, and not letting myself become a tool of AI." The "Fireworks Poetry" mini-program that the tech volunteers helped Mu Yumei develop. The confidence of a craftsperson When it comes to AI, many people are falling into deep anxiety—afraid that their jobs will one day be replaced by machines, afraid that their knowledge cannot keep up with the rapidly iterating pace of the times. Standing amid the noisy clamor, why is Mu Yumei so certain? While participating in the "Digital Mulan" project in Hangzhou, Mu Yumei saw a robot cooking. Everyone was marveling at the rapid development of technology, but she stood nearby and studied it for a long time, and instead felt enlightened: "Something like making shaobing, which looks simple but has real craft within, robots can't handle. How to work the dough, how to control the heat, what state the flatbread is in when it's stuck to the oven—can it really grasp all that? Never mind for now—even ten years from now it won't be able to replace what people do. I have that confidence." In her early twenties, Mu Yumei came alone to Shenzhen to work. Over the years, she has worked on an assembly line, picked up recyclables on the street, cleaned houses for others, and now has set up a small stall selling shaobing for more than ten years. No one taught her how to make shaobing. She bought the oven specially back in her hometown in Anhui, and before shipping it to Shenzhen, she fumbled around and practiced for a few days in her house in her hometown, then hauled the heavy oven all the way to Shenzhen. She still clearly remembers the scene of the first time she set up her stall to sell shaobing. That day, the first customer came up and asked for four shaobing. Mu Yumei hurriedly picked up the flatbreads and stuck them to the oven, but after all the flustering, her hand slipped and three freshly made flatbreads fell straight into the oven. Encountering something like this right when she had just started doing business, she could not help feeling embarrassed and helpless, her hand frozen in midair, worried that the customer would fly into a rage and despise her for being clumsy. Unexpectedly, the customer just smiled and gently said to her, "It's okay, take your time." Mu Yumei remembered that sentence for more than ten years. Now, on the streets of Shenzhen, Mu Yumei's shaobing stall is steaming hot every day. Two payment QR code signs are placed on the stall. When there are many people during peak hours, Mu Yumei nimbly flips the flatbreads with one hand holding the tongs, while the other hand skillfully gestures for customers to scan the code. When she meets elderly people who are not very good at mobile payments, or workers whose phones have run out of battery, she also smiles and waves her hand just as that customer treated her back then: "It's okay, take your time." Looking back, Mu Yumei deeply feels that many of the things she later learned actually had extremely similar beginnings. "Many things don't start only after you know how to do them; rather, you start first, do them badly, and then slowly learn," Mu Yumei said. No matter how many unfamiliar new things there are in life, as long as she dares to try them first and slowly grinds and learns over time, there is nothing to be anxious or afraid of. Making shaobing is like this, shooting short videos is like this, and writing poetry and coming into contact with AI are also like this. Mu Yumei and her shaobing stall. Photo provided by the interviewee Fireworks and poetry interwoven Just as a month ago, Mu Yumei never expected that she, with only a third-grade education, would stand alone and speak at an AI-themed conference. Mu Yumei said that many things she has done in her life were unexpected to her, and writing poetry is one of them. Two years ago, she took her little granddaughter out to play. At that time, she was not willing to go out and meet people, nor did she like to talk; she just wanted to "stay quietly alone in a corner." But the child loved running outside, so she had to follow. The activity room of Green Rose was near her home. As soon as her little granddaughter saw the room full of toys, her eyes lit up, so Mu Yumei was "forced" to go in as well. The door opened, and Ding Dang, a staff member, asked her whether she wanted to join a reading and writing class. She did not dare look the other person in the eye and shook her head repeatedly: "No, no, no, I can't." She did not dare agree, half because there was too much to do at home—taking care of the child, buying groceries and cooking, running the stall, and busying with housework, with no leisure from morning till night; and half out of low self-esteem—could someone like her, who had only studied to the third grade, have anything to do with "reading and writing"? But Ding Dang told her that it did not matter if she could not write; she could just sit nearby and watch. And so, at Ding Dang's enthusiastic invitation, she finally sat down half-reluctantly to join the reading group, and has kept going until now. The first thing Mu Yumei began to learn was to pick up paper and pen again. Although she usually had a scattered habit of reading, she had not seriously put pen to paper for more than ten years, and at first she had trouble writing even three complete characters. After studying for a while, she once gave up and lost confidence in herself. But gradually, as she wrote more and more, the things buried deep in her mind over the years seemed to find an outlet at the tip of her pen. The memories from childhood, the drifting after leaving her hometown, the various people and things in front of the shaobing stall—it turned out they had never disappeared, but had simply been quietly hidden there all along. She said that before she started writing, those things "moved me deeply" and "struck a chord in me," but she had only silently kept them in her heart; only after she truly began to write did the accumulated feelings of the past decades finally find an outlet through the opened floodgates, bit by bit "landing on paper." Mu Yumei at the Green Rose reading group. Photo courtesy of the interviewee. The first poem Mu Yumei created on her own was "Flowers of the Field," written last year when she took part in an event at Qianhai Park. The poem writes of women farming, of the land, of homesickness, and also of the fine lines that life has left on faces. In it, in fact, she herself is hidden. Every poem she wrote afterward was also like the first, never departing from her own life. She writes of her hometown—"a thousand li of golden wheat waves, rough hands gripping sickles, the sound of metal scraping against stalks, a labor symphony composed by the earth"; she also writes of Shenzhen—"this dream factory woven from steel bars is remaking me into a new dialect"; she writes of her own experience—"iron arms carve growth rings into the walls; I know fatigue better than the assembly line"; and she writes of the people around her—"I ask the hurrying passersby, who will buy my little toys; tears at the corners of my eyes and brows, how can a threadbare shirt bear such sorrow." Mu Yumei said she writes out of "ideological restlessness," that is, a kind of sensitivity to life: when she sees someone's hardship, she feels distressed; when she sees a blade of grass in a crack between stones, she thinks of people who strive to live as she does. In her eyes, there is no uniform standard for a "good poem"; if some moment in life moves her, or gives her strength in difficult times, then that moment is worth writing down. Mu Yumei's poems. Mu Yumei's writing was at first self-conscious and something she did not dare to make known. She was afraid of being seen, afraid that others would mock her—"a middle-aged woman with a third-grade education putting on airs and writing poetry"—so she only dared to write late at night, after the whole family was sound asleep, quietly sitting alone under a desk lamp, "letting the dark night be the curtain and the silence be the audience." Later, the media gradually took notice of Mu Yumei and her poems, the title "Shaobing Poet" went viral beyond her circle, and more and more attention came knocking. Yet beyond the bustle, her life did not change because of it. Her day still had an extremely fixed and heavy rhythm: in the morning she took the children to school and bought groceries, at noon she came back to prepare the ingredients for making shaobing, in the afternoon she set up her stall, and in the evening she went home. Only after the family was asleep and no one disturbed her did she have time to sort out her thoughts. Unlike the earlier fear of "being seen," writing at night now felt more like a habit—only at this time did the scattered emotions of the day slowly settle. Her family's attitude toward her writing poetry also did not change dramatically. At first, when the family did not support it, she wrote in secret; later, when the family learned that she had "gained some fame" for writing poetry, they still felt that "you are still you, and life goes on as usual, nothing is different." As for whether she worried that AI might one day write poetry better than she does, Mu Yumei gave a negative answer without hesitation. She gave an example: one day, standing by the river, her foot sank into the mud, and the muddy water soaked into a wound—AI has never experienced that specific pain and sensation. Compared with AI, which can pile up neat and flowery wording within seconds through massive data, Mu Yumei feels that the greatest and most irreplaceable foundation of her poetry lies in the word "truth." "All my poems come from my real feelings about life. I don't believe AI can have these feelings; if it could, then it would not be a machine but a human being." She smiled and said, "Besides, everyone's life experience is different. Even if one day AI really could write very good poetry, it can write its own, and I'll write mine." Now, Mu Yumei is still more accustomed to recording life with paper and pen in hand, and still feels that, rather than exploring AI, kneading each piece of dough well and baking each shaobing fragrant is more important. Taking the children to and from school, buying groceries and cooking, setting up the stall and selling shaobing—these seemingly simple and repetitive trivial matters are the most solid main thread of her life. On a Shenzhen night, when the last shaobing is bought by a customer and the evening breeze gradually turns cool, Mu Yumei sits in front of her shaobing stall, a gentle yet firm smile on her face: "I have no anxiety. This ordinary, everyday bustle before my eyes makes me feel very grounded."