American vlogger Katherine Olsen visits Shangwei Art Village in Longhua district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province. CHEN WEN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE
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 kilometers 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.
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 says, sitting in her living room as she talks about 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, living in a completely different culture and geographical location to what I'm used to," Olson says.
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 the 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: to experience China firsthand.
Her first visit to the country was thanks to a college internship in 2016, which brought her to East China's Shandong province and Shanghai. She was impressed with the vastness, diversity and unity of the country, especially the charming 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," says Olson.
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.
During her time as a postgraduate student and 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 passion for 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 the 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 enthusiast 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 You-Tube, with content ranging from campus life to travel and entertainment. She captures the lives of fishermen in a coastal village in Fujian province, films Uygur weddings in rural Turpan in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, 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, this bamboo and these creeks and things. So you're really a part of the environment," she says.
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.
"Your videos are a great testament of the true nature of the Chinese people: peace-loving, hardworking, family-oriented, law-abiding and kindhearted," says another viewer.
Apart from 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 … conditions are not good here. That's how it was 10 or 20 years ago. But for the foreign audience, they may just be unaware that this has changed so quickly," says Olson.
"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 barely seen anything. There's still so much more," she says.
American vlogger Katherine Olsen visits Shangwei Art Village in Longhua district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province. CHEN WEN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE
