About Jo
I grew up in Guilin — which, if you’ve ever seen one of those Chinese landscape paintings, is more or less the place they were painted from. Karst peaks, a river that goes silver at dawn, mist doing half the work for the postcards. I took all of it completely for granted. You always do, when it’s just home.
Then I left, and spent the next twelve years inside the hotel business — though not the glossy part you see in the lobby. I started at the very bottom, clearing plates as a server. From there I worked my way, department by department, through the whole machine: the floor, the reservations desk, revenue management (the quiet people who actually decide what you pay), and eventually sales. By the time I walked away, I’d done nearly every job a hotel has, at Banyan Tree Group — a Singapore-based luxury brand that taught me, very precisely, what “effortless” is supposed to feel like, and how rarely it actually does.
In 2024 I changed lanes completely and went into foreign trade. That’s where I finally learned to see China the way my guests see it: a little intimidating, governed by a hundred unwritten rules, and far more rewarding once someone trustworthy explains the parts that don’t translate.
Right now I’m still working in Shenzhen, and I won’t be back in Guilin full-time until I’ve earned that English tour-guide licence — the plan is early next year. But Guilin has never stopped being home, and the thing I can’t stop noticing, even from a distance, is that the people who fly in for the mountains leave having seen maybe five percent of the place. The other ninety-five — the noodle stall with a queue of locals, the festival nobody puts in a brochure, the village an hour past the crowds, the shape of an ordinary day there — that’s the Guilin I’m building this whole project to show you properly, once I’m back on the ground.
I’m currently studying for that licence, so to be straight with you: this site is me sharing what I know. It is not a travel company, and you can’t book or buy anything here yet. The real, on-the-ground part comes after the licence — and after I’m home.
Former Banyan Tree · Guilin native · 23 years here