Hi everyone, I'm Yaran or you could also call me Grace. I was born and raised in Beijing, China. Since this year April I quitted my full time job as a travel editor then turned into a freelance writer with a 6 months journey ( from May till November, or maybe longer) for discovering, experiencing new around Asia.

Traveling means a lot to me, as that's both my career field and my passion about ( although I studied in physical oceanography major). Thanks to my previous working experience, I saw and learnt many skills on how to travel professionally and more fun. One more thing, traveling is the best way helping me to find, to think which city, country I would prefer settle down.

In past few years, my favorite way of traveling is being volunteer or living with local people slowly, immersely. Once I lived in Australia (2 yrs) and Indonesia ( 2 months), I harvest tons of living skills and fun, such as taking care local kids in a Java village, fishing and cleaning the mackerel in the Great Barrier Reef, timber cutting in the rainforest, picking up the custard apples in Queensland farm, taking surfing photographs for customers, making homemade beer, even pulling out the ticks from host's neck skin...I truely appreciated those daily and little things which not only gave me life experience but also changed my thoughts of lifestyle a lot.

Usually I love spending time on museums, galleries, festivals, bars and chatting with people in person. So, even though we couldn't live together, I'm expecting to meet up you guys at a restaurant or bar talking some chill topics or sharing the life situation. I always curiosity with what things make everyone feel happy, how does everyone choose between the hometown or the distance, how to bridge the political divide at home, etc.

Besides above, most of water sports and board sports are my hobbies. If you're wild about playing those let's hangout.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

The goal I came here is to meet more, exchange more, help more with global people.
So I think here is a good place to make that, which means here is more safe than dating app for finding people, higher probability to have the same vibe than meeting with stranger randomly on street. I like the spirit of here: helping, sharing.

Interests

• writing
• cooking
• reading
• music
• surfing
• skateboarding
• languages and cultures
• swim

Music, Movies, and Books

🎵Indie, Postrock, Classical, Pop: Hyukoh, Lite, Radiohead, LouReed, Bach, Rain
🎬Drama, Road movie, sometimes need Horror movies to spice up my life:) Never get tired one is 'Lost in Translation', and Chinese director Louye's, Korean director KidukKim's.
📚Paul Theroux's.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

1）Once as a volunteer helping a local guy building his house in the virgin deep forest in Tasmania Australia, without any Internet, signal, tech stuff for 10 days, got along with tiger snake, bat, leech, wallaby.
2）By working as an editor, got many chances to interview and then became working partners with writer, artists I admired.

Teach, Learn, Share

Writing, cooking, swimming, skateboard, Chinese

What I Can Share with Hosts

Writing, cooking, swimming, skateboard, Chinese

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, China