Expats embrace new lives in home from home

US man helps growers beat shortages

Editor's Note:Many foreign nationals who are long-term China residents are insisting on staying in the country in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Below, China Daily talks with three such people.

Adrien Brill recently posted several videos of himself wearing a straw hat and picking green tea on the mountains in Huangshan, Anhui province.

Uploaded onto short-video platform Douyin, the posts showed Brill following his wife's grandmother as she taught him to pick and produce the local specialty from tea farmers.

The farming novice from the United States volunteered to help on the plantation when the senior told him that local growers could not return because of COVID-19 epidemic countermeasures, which are stricter this year as the Omicron variant has become a dominant threat.

To ensure tea production, which is the pillar industry in Huangshan, Brill took part in the tea-picking activities with other local residents to overcome labor shortages.

The English teacher at Huangshan University cannot leave the city at the moment because dozens of cases have been confirmed in the city's Xiuning county recently.

"Due to the pandemic, I can't visit my parents and other family members in the United States," he said.

"Before, the world was small, thanks to convenient transportation. It was not a big deal for me to return to the US by air. Now, that world seems so far away."

As the outbreak has affected his travel plans, he has been shooting videos about home cooking or camping in the mountains. The farming experience has inspired him to expand the subject matter of his videos.

His fluent Mandarin and proficiency in the kitchen of a small village house impresses audiences because he has "completely integrated into the local culture and customs", as one viewer commented.

This is the 32-year-old's sixth year in Huangshan. He met Qiu Tong in 2014 at a music festival in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, where he lived for seven years. In 2016, they married and settled down in Qiu's hometown in Huangshan.

The couple have many interests in common, such as music. "She is a really nice person－careful and patient. She is a very good example for me," Brill said. He said big cities have many advantages, not least a convenient lifestyle, but they are not suitable places to settle down.

"When I arrived in Huangshan, I was immediately impressed by the beautiful, comfortable environment," he said, adding that mountains and rivers dominate the city.

By filming videos, he and Qiu hope to introduce more people to the city they love.

Brill's father is French and his mother is American, and both parents speak several languages.

He was first exposed to Mandarin as a baby, because his Chinese nanny had poor English so she usually spoke to him in her mother tongue.

"Chinese was really my first language, although I wasn't aware of that at the time," Brill said.

As he showed an interest in China, his mother, a language teacher, took him with her on a business trip to Jiangsu province when he was 16.

A student dubbed him "Zhuo Wen", a title he adopted and uses in the name of his Douyin account.

Brill studied Asian Culture at the University of Arizona after graduating from high school. However, he suspended his studies and left the US after being offered the chance to travel to China free of charge and become a volunteer English teacher at a kindergarten in Chengdu.

He studied Mandarin at Sichuan University and was involved in English education at different institutions in Chengdu. Using that experience, he and Qiu opened their own English language school to teach preschoolers in Huangshan.

Initially, business was good and they could make ends meet. However, they were affected by a policy that aims to reduce the burden of extracurricular tuition on students, so they suspended their classes.

Instead, the couple have started managing their social media accounts, where they post content with Huangshan elements and publicize local specialties.

"Huangshan has natural resources, tourism potential and agricultural produce that are on a par with or even better than those in nearby Zhejiang province, but we need to develop those things, or at least make more people aware of them through social media," Brill said.

Brill often has opportunities to discuss social issues with his students. "Compared with my educational background, college students in China grow up in a very different environment. My school life had little pressure. We could arrange our own lives and make our own choices. Of course, we had to be responsible for that, whether the results were good or bad," he said.

He said his knowledge of China is the biggest reward for the years he has spent in the country.

"My experiences have changed my view of the world. People in the West may have misunderstandings or be biased about the East. After living in China for so long, I am able to understand the issues," he said.

"I can feel that when I talk with friends in the West, so I give them my side of the story. Understanding and communication are really important, especially in a world that is now so divided."