GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Hangzhou, China, which bills itself as the most romantic city in the country, this week named a 26-year-old Swiss man as its ambassador to the world, to get the message out.
The city of some six million is home to the beautiful West Lake, a Unesco World Heritage sites. The job is being described by media around the world as the dream travel job.
The winner of an international competition to name the “modern Marco Polo”, Liam Bates, from St Prex near Morges, will earn euros 40,000 during the next 12 months with a part-time contract to tell the world about Hangzhou, largely through social media. The “Dr Hangzhou” Facebook page in English has just been created to report his exploration of the area.
The lavish awards ceremony next to the Grand Canal in Hangzhou 20 May is being followed with a 19-day visit to the area by Bates, as Hangzhou’s guest.
The canal, which runs from Hangzhou to Beijing, was known as the Emperors Canal by foreign visitors due to the trips made along the waterway by emperors from several dynasties.
Bates won out over 26,000 entrants and 700 finalists in a competition to find the modern Polo for this city made famous by the original Polo, a 13th century adventurer from Italy who was the first European to chronicle his visits to China.
The contest involved laying out a plan for promoting the city as well as making a video, winning a quiz on Hangzhou and showing the contestants’ adventuresome side. While Bates has traveled widely in China, and filmed a motorcycle adventure from Lhasa, Tibet, to Shanghai, Hangzhou is new to him.
Shanghai Daily, a popular independent English language media in China, writes:
“Five candidates reached the final round. Bates was selected over a social media expert from Australia, a PhD holder in tourism from Romania, an American-born Chinese woman from Los Angeles who is a columnist and TV travel show host, and a traveler from Paris.
The commission carefully screened the applicants on their familiarity with China, social media presence and sense of adventure.
“Bates has a strong passion and deep understanding of China and Chinese culture,” says Li. “He is also quite an adventurer, boasts many followers on social media and he is good-looking.”
Film submitted for the Hangzhou contest
Bates, who is a dual British-Swiss national, is a documentary filmmaker and television host who produces his own adventure travel series in China.
The video shows some of the work he has done, including a recent trip where he spent a month living with a tribe on a remote Indonesian island.
He also frequently appears as a master of ceremonies at various events in China and as a conference speaker in Europe and North America. He is fluent in English, French and Mandarin and recently published a book on his adventures, which he wrote in Chinese. English subtitle: “If you follow all the rules, you miss all the fun”.
He attended the International School of Geneva, La Chataigneraie campus in Founex, then the University of British Columbia in Vancouver on a “Young Leader of Tomorrow” scholarship, where he studied film and Chinese and received a degree in Asian studies.
He represented Canada at the 2010 China Bridge international language contest for university students to reward the world’s best young Mandarin speakers, where he won both the first and eloquence prizes. It aired in front of a TV audience of nearly 300 million and launched his television and public speaking career.
Bates paid a first brief visit to China at age 13, when he hiked near a remote part of the Great Wall with his parents, but his interest in China was sparked by studying the Chinese competitive sport wushu, more popularly known through films as kung fu. He spent his summers in China starting at age 16, to learn the language and perfect his wushu skills. While at university he set up a company for affordable student travel called Bridges to China, based on his own experience.
The Hangzhou position is a part-time one for the year, allowing him to pursue his latest entrepreneurial adventure: he recently opened a a business in Mollens, canton Valais, developing air filtration systems to remove pollution in Chinese households.
Editor’s note: this must be one of the most awkward articles I’ve ever written – Liam Bates is my son! I decided to wait until a few international media had shown their interest, even though we have been quite excited at our house since learning the news Monday. Here are some of the reports coming out on the modern Marco Polo (with mixed accuracy in their reporting!):
Daily Mail, Forbes magazine, NBC TV, Shanghai Daily, Travel & Leisure magazine and, in French, Figaro