Discussion keeps the world...
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve today with Feifei and Yushan.
Coming up from fire making to foraging.
The rise of extreme survival contests has launched a new wave of grassroots adventurers.
No longer content to simply watch others face the elements.
A legion of online viewers is now seeking their own visceral connection to the wild.
It's a move proving that this genre isn't just about watching others.
It's about real people answering a primal call, one muddy, challenging trek at a time.
After that, if the chilly temperatures of winter have you feeling a little more do nothing than do something, well then maybe you need a little motivating.
We've got Motivational Monday on the way.
Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts.
And don't forget, we love hearing your voice, so send your voice notes our way with anything that you might be thinking about any of the things that we discuss here on the program.
Here's how you get in touch, roundtablepodcast at qq.com.
Once again, roundtablepodcast at qq.com.
And now...
I don't know if this would be for you or not, but in recent years a fascination with extreme wilderness has surged among young people here in the country, driven by a profound desire to escape urban pressures and connect with a more shall we call it primal way of life.
These hit competitions with their viral appeal have become more than just entertainment.
They're really changing how a young generation relates to the natural world and also the specialized gear that they see on screen.
It's more than just passive viewing, too.
These competitions have sparked a genuine cultural movement.
They've motivated countless viewers to seek out their own real-world survival challenges.
And in doing so they've turned remote landscapes into aspirational classrooms, bringing about a new ethos built on raw authenticity, hard-won self-reliance and a deeper, more intentional bond with nature.
Fei-Fei and Yushan, are we likely to see you in some of these viral clips out there surviving the wild?
Well, it's hard to say.
You know, we're not talking about hiking and camping in the forest.
You're right.
No, not anymore.
It's about... basically living in the wilderness with nothing, literally.
Survival challenge.
Yeah, a lot of this challenge is carried out in the form of a contest.
So there are requirements for contestants.
For example, they can only bring essential survival equipment.
For example, a knife.
A jacket.
Yeah, a jacket, some clothes.
You can't just walk into the forest wearing nothing.
But just apart from that, you can't have your phones or GPS or any electronic devices or any lighters.
No, you have to, you know, find water, find food, making fire, build your own shelter from scratch.
I'm not going to survive a night.
I probably wouldn't last five minutes if it were cold outside.
So these are not television shows, right?
But they are organized events.
They are organized competitions.
Yeah, there are many of such organized competitions out there.
But at the very beginning, they enter the public eyes in the form of variety shows.
So that's around the year 2014 to 2015, when this type of shows first began to be more popular here in China.
One is called I Am Legend, which is considered by many to be China's first celebrity extreme survival reality show.
So that's aired on Qinghai Satellite TV for the first time back in 2014.
And this show introduces a seven-day extreme challenge format which includes just designing an accommodation, very basic accommodation center for celebrities to stay out in the wild with some cows or with a bunch of chickens for seven full days and only drink from milk or only take eggs chicken laid eggs for meals.
So that's one type.
And then by 2015, another major hit came, which It's called Survivor Games.
In Chinese, 跟着Bear去冒险, or it can literally be translated into survive with Bear Grylls.
Oh, Bear Grylls.
Yeah, he came to China.
Oh, really?
Following, kind of bringing this whole vibe of his documentary TV style.
Yeah yeah, british thing into china with a bunch of chinese celebrities too don't quote me, but yeah, i think bear grills was like maybe former special forces or something.
I think so too, military related.
And then yeah, he became super famous in in the west as well.
He's from england, i think um, but yeah, all over the world he.
It's just like you watch this guy on tv And he can survive anywhere in any condition, doing anything.
And the show was designed to show people.
If you find yourself in this situation too, Which we will know,
When will that happen?
Then you will know what to do.
Knock on wood, you never find yourself in the situation that Bear Grylls did.
That's sort of the idea for the survival game season one, or rather all of its seasons of a TV show.
But it's a combination of Bear Grylls with his very professional survival skills plus an associate professor's skill whose name is Jiang Chengjian.
He's from Fudan University of International Relations and Public Affairs, so the two of them kind of like the team leader and the professor quote, unquote they um.
One provides survival skills for the whole team of celebrities, while the other one provides Team communication, emotional support plus translation for the rest of the team.
So that's more or less of a very engaging show that captured a lot of the Chinese audience back then 10 years ago.
So that's where the kind of concept was introduced about these survival type things.
Right.
Okay.
But those were TV shows.
Those were TV shows.
What we're talking about today, these are not television shows.
They are not celebrity.
Go pick up the chickens from the egg or the eggs from the chickens shows.
No um, most of the all of the contestants this time we're talking about here is just ordinary people like you and me doing their own.
They have their own job in real life.
But when um this contest open the, if they're you're interested, if you have, of course, experiences in outdoor activities, you can sign yourself up, and if you pass what the organizers' assessment, then you are part of the contest.
For example, I think one of the most famous such challenge is taking place in Zhangjiajie, in the Qixing Mountain.
The challenge has taken place two times this year, and the first season happened in summer.
And ended in September, I think, with 10 final 10 contestants, with three and final winners with especially, with one going home with, I think, 100000 yuan in the prize, called Dongdong.
And they basically living in Qixing Mountain for different periods of time with nothing but knives and pots.
So in the competition, because it is a competition, how did they compete with each other?
What were they required to do?
In the very first season it's not really clearly reported that they are teaming up, meaning that it's more or less like a Hunger Games kind of style of competition.
Erasing on the killing part, of course.
It's just survival.
So from that moment on, you're in and your survival purely depends on your own creativity and skills.
And you need to make fire on your own using a magnesium stick or a natural wooden stick.
Rub it to get fire.
And you need to build your own fire shelter by with bamboo or wood.
I think that's one of the their challenges like yeah yeah, the requirements you need to meet in order to keep on staying in this competition, so that's all on yourself.
And i remember seeing people using i'm not sure if it's wood or bamboo, like they don't really have a bowl to eat, so they have to cut things out, curve things up, Make their own bowl.
Make their own bowl.
That's how independent they were kind of expected and required to be in order to win.
So, like you said Fei-Fei, so the first season ended up with Yang Dongdong walking away with a 100000 yuan prize.
And now the second season is still ongoing until the moment we're speaking, and it's been expanded dramatically.
Nearly 100 participants joined at the very beginning since the open phase.
And for the second season, at least for the beginning phase, they are allowed to team up.
But the team is no more than two people.
Okay, so you can team up with someone, but you can't get a group of people together.
Nope, you can go solo or team up with someone you like.
This is insanely popular on social media from October 9th.
And by the way, season one finished... of this competition finished in September, correct?
Right.
And then season two started almost immediately after.
A few days later.
Yeah.
Usually, you know, with reality TV shows you'll get like six months or something between different seasons.
But this, I guess, was so popular they started it immediately after.
Anyway, back to how popular this is.
Related short videos of the challenges accumulated 15.5 billion views on Douyin.
15.5 billion.
Everybody is watching these clips online.
Yeah, I've seen them.
I've seen someone cutting down their mustache and hair to start a fire.
Chopping off their hair.
Yeah, because they have this huge knife.
I think one of the essentials they bring with them.
Did it work?
Yeah, yeah.
You can see the smoke coming from those very short videos.
Because if it didn't work, it'd be...
Probably feel pretty bad about that.
Another tip for us, if you one day find yourself in the wilderness, lose your own hair.
And another, one of the very famous, I think, contestants is called Lin Bei.
He is very popular and he's only, I think, 25 years old.
Yeah, he's the youngest in season one.
Yeah, and he alone have garnered nearly 250 million views.
Wow.
And the reason for his popularity is not only about his skills in the wilderness for survival, but also about his knowledge about herbs and plants in the mountains, because he is from a traditional Chinese medicine school.
Right.
He majored in pharmaceutics.
So he knows what to eat and, more importantly, what not to eat.
Yes, and also how to cure yourself if you really find yourself in a very difficult situation.
Wow.
But he has quit the challenge in the finals I think 10 days into the finals because he thinks he has showcased his skills, his survival skills, but I think he decided it wasn't good enough for him to stay on, so he quit.
The benefit for the regions is significant too.
After the launch of the event the number of visitors and the income from businesses in the area which is extremely scenic, by the way it's absolutely stunning.
They've increased more than 40% compared to the same period last year.
So that's obviously all because of the clips that people are watching online.
People are seeing it and they're just flocking there because they want to be there too.
Yes, exactly.
And according to one of the organizers of this Qixing Mountain Cup Extreme Wilderness Survival Challenge, The reason that they decided to launch such challenge in the Qixing Mountain is because where they are in Zhangjiajie is very competitive in tourism.
It's just so beautiful.
There are so many tourists.
There are so many options out there.
And they have to stay competitive on the market.
And so that's one of the reasons that they decided to launch this challenge and go online to make Qixing Mountain known.
It's kind of genius, isn't it?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, because you're going to get so much attention. from the viral clips.
Why, though, has it become such a huge trend among young people, I wonder?
Well, you know, today's young people, they're always into what's hot recently.
And of course, going outdoors, surviving outdoors has become one of those trends.
So, as of early April 2025, the number of people participating in outdoor sports in China has already surpassed 400 million.
And the main consumers of outdoor sports are the middle-aged and the young groups, of course.
Yeah, but this isn't exactly outdoor sports.
But in so many ways it kind of is, because outdoor sports also incorporates sports.
What's needed for these survival games competitions, like you need those equipments, the knives, the kind of jacket, the special made.
Is it called the entrenching tool, like a shuffle or something?
Oh, you're asking the wrong person.
I wouldn't know anything about this.
So yeah, back to the data.
So in 2024, China's online sales related to outdoor sports hit 300 million yuan, which is roughly over 41 billion US dollars, meaning that more and more people, particularly young people between the age of 25 to 34, they are into and they are also investing a lot in outdoor equipments and just experiencing it for themselves.
Also, the number of people participating in these sports, in these outdoor activities, has surpassed 400 million.
I guess simply hiking or camping in the woods sipping on coffee, taking pictures, can no longer suffice them.
They have to take the game on.
Next level.
Yes.
But that comes with its own, I think, challenges as well.
If you especially considering, you know, for these challenges you are basically living in the wilderness in a very dangerous situation.
I'm thinking, too, that there's something that maybe we can relate to horror movies somehow.
And what I mean by that is one of the reasons people love horror movies is because they're not actually there, but they feel like they're kind of there.
They get to experience it without actually going through it themselves.
Maybe that's part of the reason for the interest here is that you know, in the extreme, extreme cases, you'd never want to find yourself there perhaps.
But at least you can learn some stuff along the way.
Plus, you get the beauty, the aesthetic value of watching these beautiful video clips from a natural, a gorgeous natural environment.
Well, I think it also sort of teaches people how dangerous these outdoor activities can be, because I think for a lot of city dwellers they are not aware of the nature's power before they decided to hike in a completely strange environment.
And by watching these short clips coming from these contestants, for example, watching them trying to find safe water to drink, to purify the water, watching them how they search for edible plants and animals in the woods, and how cold nights on the mountains can be.
It sort of teaches you you need to respect the nature, you need to know the environment before you step into it yourself.
Well, earlier this year, we had a topic about how people of all ages, literally, We're into going into the forest and pick up mushrooms.
Mushroom foraging.
Recognizing what is poisonous and what is not.
And this is just taking it one step further.
Surviving or not.
At the time when we talked about the mushroom foraging.
We talked about the potential danger there of not if you don't know what you're doing, you could get yourself in a lot of trouble by eating something that you're not familiar with.
The same thing might apply here, I guess.
If people see it in the clips and the people in the competitions they might be Feifei people like you and I, but at least they have some sort of natural survival instinct or skill.
Like they're out there, they're doing it.
Yeah, so it probably looks easy in the clips that are shared on social media.
I think that's my point.
So when people see it in the clips they think, oh well, i mean i could probably cut off my hair and make a fire and eat a mushroom off a tree or something.
Do you see what i mean?
Any potential problems there?
Safety related maybe?
Yeah, exactly.
Especially if you look at the challenges itself.
You know the organizers has arranged, for example, rotating shifts 24 hours a day, just following contestants all the time.
And they also have medical staff on call also 24 hours a day.
And they also do minor checkups on them every day and a major checkup every week.
So you have to track their basic body indicator to see whether they are still safe to continue on the challenges.
And a lot of them do quit following the recommendations from these organizers as well.
Sorry to interrupt.
And that's how you lose weight?
Yeah, you quit.
Yes.
Oh, so the competition will just keep going.
I think season one lasted 70 days in total.
And we're still waiting to see how long season two will go.
But you just go until you're the last person out there.
Yeah, until everybody else kind of can't stand it anymore.
What happens, though?
What happens if two people are just really good at this?
That's like 2035 and they're still out there.
That was kind of what happened at the end of season five.
Ten of them, I think, who still kind of hang in there without any of them quitting.
So they all get kind of agreed by the competition host saying that it's too cold out there, the temperature has dropped to an unsafe degree, so let's just stop here as season one and you're all going into season two.
They just continued on.
Oh goodness me, you.
Final question, honestly honest answer Do you think you could do this Yushan, or not?
No, they eat grasshopper.
I can't eat grasshopper.
Yeah, I saw that clip.
The lady had it on like a skewer.
Yeah, like it was street food.
But people eat street food grasshoppers, though.
Yeah.
You couldn't do it?
No.
Is it raw?
It's protein.
You can't burn it on fire.
Feifei, season one lasted 70 days.
How long does Feifei last?
Well, I would quit in 2015 when Bear Grylls ate that piece of raw rat meat in his reality show.
It was the time for me to say, no, that's not for me.
You quit 10 years ago.
You know, I kind of think I could do it.
Because I'm not actually in it.
But then again, you know, human beings, we can do more than what we think we're capable of.
So I think for the three of us, if we were actually out there, I think we'd last longer than we think we would.
More than five minutes.
More than five minutes.
Grasshoppers included.
You're listening to Roundtable.
Best of luck, by the way, to the contestants that are still involved.
It's ongoing now, right?
You're listening to Roundtable.
We've got Motivational Monday on the way.
Motivational Monday. personal monday motivational monday time feifei kick us off yes i went actually for one for run in the middle of gale alerts in beijing for the past several days you just finished telling us you couldn't survive in the wild and you're out running in the middle of the different i have my full gear you know i have layers and had my phone i can't live like that without my phone So as I push forward against the wind, I start to have this small revelation is about, you know, I used to struggle with balance. you know, the strength on my right side isn't the same on my left side, and the imbalance shows up everywhere.
For example, I have pains in my knees and my shoulders and also I have problems with alignment when I was trying to do some movements.
But I tried to correct myself, quote unquote here, but I couldn't find the points of alignment.
I don't know when I was doing it right, when I made some mistakes.
But as I was running into the wind, I start to notice.
You know, I start to notice my core, start to notice how my alignment and which side of strength should I have more?
So I think that with some amount of resistance um, it's perfect for to help me understand my balance well instead of, you know, just slowing down by the wind.
So it can works in life the same way too, for example, when we have the right amount of pressure.
I'm not talking about too much pressure, enough resistance, just to force us to adjust, to become aware and then find our proper alignment in life.
Too little, we drift.
Too much, we break.
So we need the right amount of pressure.
And it also shows us where we are supposed to go.
It helps us to discover a stronger, a more balanced version of ourselves.
So for our listeners who are facing some headwinds in the week or in the past, maybe don't look at them as obstacles, but as guides, as pushes to help you find your better balance.
The wind was somehow a mirror that allowed you to reflect better upon and focus on your balance and your alignment in your body, and without that wind you wouldn't have even perhaps thought about that.
Exactly.
But the wind, which presented itself as an obstacle, actually became a resource for you to improve something.
Exactly.
Wow.
This just reminds me of something I learned in Arnis, which is a type of martial art.
So when a stick is swaying in front of you, directing at your head, instead of dodging, like as in backward, staying backward or going on the side, you
Just keep on, step a big step forward, just welcoming that stick in the meantime blocking it from the side so that whoever is attacking you goes right next into you and into the back um direction from you, so that you are no longer in his or her range.
That's sort of the same thing.
You don't dodge, you don't fall backwards in front of the wind, you go into it, you kind of let it shake a little bit, enjoy that and then realize you're already out of it.
What you both just described are the exact skills needed for season three of Survive China.
Precisely.
I don't think it's the right amount of pressure.
With your iPhone.
That will do it for Roundtable for today.
Join us again next time, please.
