By Zheng Yuntian
(ECNS) -- Recently, "China travel" blogs have become a major trend on international social media platforms. Foreign influencers from all kinds of backgrounds have flocked to the country, each trying their own angle, from city walks and food tour to high-speed rail experiences and countryside scenery.
An American influencer ventured deep into the Daliangshan mountains of Sichuan. He appeared to arrive with a set of familiar assumptions to document a wasteland forgotten by time and riddled with narcotics.
Yet, from the very second his boots hit the soil, reality delivered a stinging slap to his preconceptions.
Tommy Beard, the Western vlogger behind the YouTube channel Sabbatical who has spent two years chronicling his travels across China, recently released an in-depth dispatch from his journey through Daliangshan. His video, provocatively titled "Inside China's Poorest, Most Drug-Infested Region," may feature a sensationalist headline, but its content is anything but predictable.
Far from confirming the grim expectations set by the title, the footage captures a profound cultural collision and a series of revelations. For Western viewers who clicked on the link expecting their stereotypes to be validated, the footage delivered what the internet calls "a massive dose of shock."
Tommy Beard captures street scenes in Daliangshan. Screenshot from Sabbatical's YouTube video.
Clambering over jagged ridges that would even give a mountain goat vertigo, Beard prepared himself for total isolation in the hinterlands of Daliangshan. After all, before his venture, he expected a desolate, impoverished wasteland, essentially the so-called "West Virginia of China".
Yet, just as he resigned himself to losing all contact with the outside world, his phone lit up.
Pointing his camera at the signal bars, Beard exclaimed: "I've have got a perfect 5G connection."
"Nowhere else has better network coverage than China," Beard said.
Tommy Beard points to a telecom signal box installed on the cliffside by Chinese carriers. Screenshot from Sabbatical's YouTube video.
The "Cliff Village," once famous for its dangerous, rattan ladders, has been utterly transformed. The government has not only installed sturdy steel stairs but has even constructed a helicopter landing pad.
To Beard's performative "disappointment", the scenes of squalor and backwardness he had anticipated were indeed nowhere to be found. Most villagers had long since moved into modern relocation housing in a valley, as the original mountain peaks turned into trendy tourist hotspots.
Following his visits to the local resettlement communities, Beard couldn't help but marvel at the Yi elders who accosted him at the village entrances. They pressed cigarettes and local delicacies into his hands. He noted that the plain kindness and serenity on their faces were something that could never be scripted or staged.
Yet one of the most striking moments in the video came not from the infrastructure, but from a conversation with local children.
Surrounded by a group of giggling youngsters, one child suddenly and quite innocently began grilling him on the sordid details of the American "Epstein scandal."
The questions caught the seasoned globetrotter visibly off guard, as his face flushed a deep shade of red.
Before he could regain his composure, the coup de grâce hit, as the children chased after him, asking: "We heard Americans eat people... is that true?"
Tommy Beard is questioned by the children about whether Epstein ate people. Screenshot from Sabbatical's YouTube video.
The scene left viewers behind their screens in fits of laughter. Thanks to internet access in the area, the children of Daliangshan are able to watch the same videos as their urban counterparts, follow global news, and are acutely—perhaps even hilariously—aware of the dark shadows looming over "high society" across the Pacific Ocean.
The sight of these children walking freely in the sun, vibrant and unafraid to challenge a foreign visitor, stands in harrowing contrast to the tragic fate of the young victims exploited on Epstein's Little Saint James island.
Is this not the most resounding slap in the face to those in the West who tirelessly attempt to smear China?
As more details about the Epstein documents are unsealed, a deluge of evidence has exposed the depravity of the American elites, with the sexual abuse and exploitation of minors being the most heinous of their crimes.
U.S. lawmakers have noted with horror how these individuals discussed "sourcing" girls, with some even facilitating their transport like mere items. The casual nature with which these acts were discussed in texts and emails is nauseating. The files mention teenagers and children from multiple countries, including discussions involving victims as young as nine.
While some Western voices often present themselves as moral authorities on human rights, scandals such as the Epstein case have exposed serious problems within Western elite circles, particularly involving the abuse and exploitation of minors.
One must ask: where is the "freedom" and "justice" they so loudly proclaim?
For many Western viewers who followed Beard's journey, the biggest lesson may be simple: the real China must be seen with one's own eyes and experienced firsthand.
For too long, some Western media outlets, acting under political cue, have comfortably retreated into dark corners, using heavily biased filters to slice and dice footage to construct a version of China that satisfies their arrogant imagination: impoverished, numb, and lifeless.
However, when an ordinary Western vlogger points an unfiltered camera at reality, that false sense of superiority, built on layers of lies, collapses in an instant.
The full bars of 5G signal in Daliangshan and the sharp questions asked by the children there stripped away the last layer of moral cover for some in the West.
They are desperate to find a fabricated "hell" in other countries, yet fail to see that the real hell lies much closer to their homes: in their own institutional corruption and moral decay.
This deep-rooted arrogance only exposes the extent to which some people in the West remain trapped in their own self-deception — blind, deaf, and unwilling to face reality.
https://www.oliannews.com/cn/2026/06-12/401230.shtml
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