Reflection I: Falling in Love with Rural China

A personal reflection on how rural China shaped my understanding of the country’s transformation, its people, and the authenticity behind rapid development.

This piece marks a departure from the usual content you’ll find in This Week in Rural China. Instead of focusing on the latest news or recent policy developments, I want to take a moment to reflect on my personal journey into rural China—starting from the very beginning. It’s a story of how I, a foreigner, came to love a part of the world I had no intention of understanding. Through the rural landscapes, the resilience of its people, and the unspoken truths of everyday life, I’ve come to realise how deeply these experiences have shaped not just my understanding of China, but my work, my studies, and the way I see the world.

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Like any fool might, I came to China as a stranger, intending only to keep my distance, a traveller passing through, untouched and unmarked. I had no plans to stay, no thought of studying the place or its people. I thought one year would be enough before I moved on, as I had many times before. But somehow, the land—this vast, untamed land—refused to let me leave, as lands often do when they sense they’ve found someone who’ll listen, even if that person doesn’t realise it at first.

At that time, I had no interest in rural China. To me, it was a place on the edge of a country I didn’t understand. The mountains of northern Hebei were no place for a nonchalant foreigner, especially one who hadn’t come with questions in his heart. It wasn’t what the world outside spoke of—the shiny cities or the flashing promises of progress. It wasn’t the China of Western outrage or alarmist headlines; it wasn’t even the one dashing past on high-speed trains. It was a place forgotten, where the air tasted of coal dust, and the hills wore the marks of time in the same way old men wore their Mao suits. And yet, something about it—the way the wind seemed to breathe in its own rhythm, along the frozen river and up through the mountains—made me linger longer than I had intended.

I thought I was simply passing through. But the more I stayed, the more I realised I couldn’t remain a stranger. The rhythms of life —whether it was the daily routine of villagers or the way the seasons shaped their work—began to weave themselves into my own. I couldn’t quantify it in my juvenile mind, but I began to see how these seemingly quiet moments held a deeper significance that the cities couldn’t offer.

The more I wandered the mountain trails between hemp fields and arid rocky outcrops, the more I saw how the complexities of rural life defied the usual narratives of China in that post-Beijing Olympics era—those of quick progress, technological feats, and bustling cities. Rural China wasn’t a place of glamour, nor was it untouched by change. But it was here, amidst the struggles and resilience of everyday life, where I realised I could witness China’s true story. The contrasts I saw—of tradition battling modernity, the collision of past and future—were more profound here than anywhere else I’d been in my years of travelling. The places I thought I was just passing through became critical to understanding the country’s wider transformation.

So I decided to stay another year. The more I learned about life in rural China, the more I understood about the country as a whole. What was meant to be a brief visit turned into years—not out of any romanticised view of the landscape or the ‘simplicity’ of rural life, but because I found my assumptions continuously challenged. These experiences reshaped my understanding of what it meant to be part of China’s broader narrative.

And yet, change was always creeping in. The smoky chimney that had once kept the nearest town alive was closing, and the glow of a shopping mall began to chase away the light of those small shaokao stalls. The faces of the people, once so certain of their place in the world, began to shift. The future was coming for them, faster than they were ready to meet it. But the land, the mountains, the river—they remained, watching quietly as the world around them transformed.

In the months since I began writing This Week in Rural China, I’ve found myself revisiting these thoughts again and again. It felt appropriate, almost necessary, to justify why I’ve chosen to cover rural China in my writing—to explain why a foreigner like me, so far removed, has chosen to focus not on geopolitics or megacities but on the rural heartlands. It is because, in rural China, amidst the villages, the rice paddies, the fields, and the rivers, you observe the struggles and hopes of over half a billion people. This is where the contradictions of modern China play out most vividly, where the traditional and the modern, the past and the future, collide in the most compelling ways.

I came to China with no intention to stay, no intention to understand. But now, when I look back, I realise that what hooked me was not only the land or the people who live on it but also the authenticity they embody. It was how rapid development defined not only what China was becoming but also what it was. The truth of this place—this rural heart of China—lies not in its progress but in the resilience and richness of its past and the quiet dignity of those who still cling to it, even as the world rushes ahead.

Though I remained an outsider, I was no longer only an outsider; I had scratched the surface of something deeper, something that I would never capture in a lifetime of academic study.

Soon, I would learn that Rural China is not a place that belongs solely to those who live there—it belongs to all of us in ways we may not yet fully understand.