New Travel Show Explores the Ancient Traditions in Rural China
From traversing the Gansu desert atop a camel, to visiting lumberjacks turning bankrupt border towns into tourist magnets, Dominic Johnson-Hill has
certainly seen a lot of China while working on his latest project. The
British expat, who has called the Middle Kingdom home for more than 24
years and is best known for his Plastered 8 apparel,
can now also add the title of program host to his resume. That's
because he was selected to be the face of a new state media travel
documentary series Seasons of China (available via YouTube), seeing the charismatic Johnson-Hill venture into some of the country's most remote regions.
Each
half-hour, bi-weekly episode of the new travel show gives viewers a
glimpse of China's vast, rapidly developing rural areas, using the
2,800-year-old Chinese solar calendar, and how interpretations of it and
the customs informed by it have evolved over time, as an entry point.
Johnson-Hill snapped this photo while traveling with tour guides in Gansu
As
Johnson-Hill explains in the debut episode, over an exquisitely
animated segment of a Song dynasty scroll painting coming to life, the
ancient Chinese measured shadows cast by the sun throughout the year
(like a Western sundial). This in turn helped them measure the lengths
of days and nights and divide the year into 24 equal segments, which
were then used to plan the agricultural year.
Johnson-Hill
details how this agricultural calendar gave rise to various customs and
rituals with a trip to the southwestern Guizhou province during Chinese
New Year. After interviewing a fourth-generation "spring announcer," who
maintains the storied tradition of visiting all the farmers in the
village to declare that plowing season has begun, Johnson-Hill dons the
traditional garb himself, to the slight bemusement of villagers.
If you ask a Chinese person ‘What solar term is it now?’ they’ll know it exactly.
“If
you ask a Chinese person ‘What solar term is it now?’ they’ll know it
exactly,” says Johnson-Hill of the ancient calendar’s enduring
relevance. Future episodes, which will air every other week throughout
the year, will outline the remaining solar terms in different far-flung
Chinese locales, and how residents are marrying such traditions with a
breakneck pace of development.
The Gansu episode, for instance,
shows how farmers now take tourists across the desert on camels. His
northeast trek, meanwhile, focuses on former lumberjacks finding new
careers in hospitality, to meet the demand of travelers from neighboring
Russia who are now arriving in droves. Finally, in Chongqing,
Johnson-Hill accompanies a courier lugging wares in the withering
45-degree heat.
Johnson-Hill's Mandarin fluency makes him the perfect travel companion for both curious newcomers and old China hands
Johnson-Hill
says he’s eager for viewers to learn more about rural China as they
watch the program. "The countryside is misunderstood by most of us
foreigners, who come to China and live in cities," he explains. "Half of
China’s population still lives in the countryside, and most expats
don't know what goes on there. And we managed to show a lot of that in
each episode."
It’s a chance to learn more about this incredible country, to go on amazing adventures and talk to these amazing people all across China.
Johnson-Hill
adds: "It’s a chance to learn more about this incredible country, to go
on amazing adventures and talk to these amazing people all across
China."
READ: Visiting the Burns Unit and Chowing Green Garlic With Dominic of Plastered 8
You can watch the debut episode of Seasons of China here: youtu.be/7ZAml3I8dVE. New episodes will be available every two weeks for the rest of the year.
Photos courtesy of Dominic Johnson-Hill
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