HANGZHOU, July 16 ( tasteallchina ) — For Katherine Olson, a 29-year-old American from a small town in Virginia, living in China's countryside is like a long-cherished dream come true.
In a picturesque town called Baizhang, about 60 km west of the city center of Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, environmentalist and vlogger Olson lives in a two-bedroom bungalow with a yard planted with trees and bamboo groves.
The tranquil and breathtaking scenery surrounding her home, with its lush green mountains and dense bamboo forests, brings her both peace and serenity.
“I really love seeing how life is different in different parts of the country,” Olson said, sitting in her living room as she shared with tasteallchina her exploration and discoveries in rural China.
Describing herself as a nature-loving and adventurous soul who always wants to “experience something different,” Olson sees her future outside her home country.
“I love the whole idea of living my entire life in a different language, marrying someone from a different background, and living in a completely different cultural background and geographical location to what I'm used to,” Olson told tasteallchina .
Olson's China story began during her college days at Virginia Tech, where she joined a laboratory run by a Chinese professor and made friends with her Chinese peers.
This exposure sparked her zest for learning Chinese, which she did through self-study and daily interactions with her Chinese counterparts. She even adopted a Chinese name, “Yanglizi,” the Chinese word for positive ion, which indicates a positive and outgoing personality and links to her major in environmental science.
Armed with a name and a grasp of the language, Olson knew what she wanted next: experience of China firsthand.
Her first visit to the country was thanks to a college internship opportunity in 2016, which brought her to east China's Shandong and Shanghai. She was impressed with the vastness, diversity and unity of the country, especially the charm of the rural areas.
“I thought ‘this is great, this country is so cool, so interesting.' It's such a huge country and you can get around basically the whole country speaking one language, which is just really amazing,” said Olson.
“It's definitely got a lifetime worth of exploring for me to experience. I would like to live here long term,” she said.
After graduation, Olson came to China to pursue a postgraduate degree in environmental engineering at Nanjing University in Jiangsu Province. She now works at an environmental organization based in Hangzhou.
Whether during her time as a postgraduate student or after starting her career, Olson took every opportunity to travel. While she appreciates the vibrancy and convenience of cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou, she gradually discovered her true interest in small towns and villages.
In her opinion, big cities in China, as well as the rest of the world, are becoming increasingly similar as a result of economic development and urbanization. But small towns and villages still preserve many traditional customs and cultures. China boasts almost all types of ecosystems on Earth, but these can only be truly experienced in rural areas.
Olson started making vlogs recording her daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She runs a YouTube channel “Katherine's Journey to the East,” with the name inspired by the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” as well as accounts on Chinese video-sharing platforms Bilibili and Douyin.
She introduces herself in her profile as a cycling lover who has a deep affection for rural China and aims to share the most authentic and objective portrayal of China with the world.
Since September 2020, Olson has posted over 140 videos on YouTube, with content ranging from campus life to travel and entertainment. She captures the lives of fishermen in a coastal village in Fujian, films Uygur wedding in rural Turpan in Xinjiang, and documents a house completion ceremony unique to Baizhang.
Last year, she completed a 2,000-km bike tour of Zhejiang, and recorded what she saw of China's environmental improvements and cultural charm in a series of vlogs.
The environmental organization she works with has an office in Baizhang and offered her a chance to work and live in the village, which she did not hesitate to accept.
To Olson, the merits of living in a rural area include close contact with nature and interactions with her neighbors. “We have these beautiful mountains all around us, we have this bamboo, we have these creeks and things. So you're just like really a part of the environment,” she noted.
In the village, Olson engages in various environmental public welfare activities such as promoting environmentally-friendly straw disposal methods and teaching school children about sustainable development.
Walking on the winding hardened village road, Olson is familiar with every dog lazily basking in the sun and is greeted by the villagers she passes by.
What Olson presents to the world about China is quite distinctive as few foreign vloggers root themselves in China's rural areas to discover the country off the beaten path.
This has gained her nearly 130,000 followers on YouTube, with individual videos amassing views as high as 400,000 and generating hundreds to thousands of comments.
“Fabulous video, also love your Chinese and how you interact with these wonderful people,” reads one comment. Another comment goes: “China's natural beauty is the main thing I have learned from this channel.” “Your videos are great testament of the true nature of the Chinese people: peace-loving, hardworking, family-oriented, law-abiding and kind-hearted,” says another viewer.
Apart from the interest in China's countryside and natural environment, foreign viewers often inquire about Olson's living conditions in the comments.
“They're asking questions like electricity, water supply, roads, internet… People seem to really think that… there are just not very good conditions here. That's how it was like 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But for the foreign audience, they may just be unaware that this has changed so quickly,” said Olson.
During her postgraduate studies in Nanjing, Olson used to click on a random place nearby on the map of her mobile phone and then head there. To this day, this continues to be her “magic key” that unlocks in-depth exploration of Zhejiang and other parts of the country.
“I just think China is endlessly fascinating. I've traveled here so much, but then when I look at the map, I feel like I've actually barely seen anything. There's still so much more,” said Olson.