880,000 followers watch U.S. YouTuber get schooled by Chinese kids

Tommy Beard is an American vlogger with over 880,000 subscribers on YouTube. His channel Sabbatical focuses on traveling to so-called “controversial” or dangerous places around the world. Recently, he arrived in Daliangshan, southwest China’s Sichuan Province, planning to shoot a video titled “Inside China's poorest and most drug addicted area.” 

But when he held up his phone, he found: full 5G signals on top of the mountain; Yi elders told him that the entire village had been relocated downhill and properly resettled five years ago; there were schools and homestays at the foot of the mountain, and villagers were living a comfortable life; local kids even grilled him about the Epstein scandal…

Beard came to document a “backward China,” but ended up being taught a lesson by local seniors and children. As one commenter wrote: “If that’s China’s poorest and most drug addicted area, we in the U.S. are in big trouble.”