New Travel Show Explores the Ancient Traditions of Rural China in the Face of Rapid Development

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.

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,” 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 lugs wares in the withering 45-degree heat.   

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."

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. New episodes will be available every two weeks for the rest of the year.

More stories by this author here.

Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
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Photos courtesy of Dominic Johnson-Hill