Liam Bates
Liam Bates is an entrepreneur, television host and adventurer from Switzerland, born 28 June 1988. Bates' first appearance on Chinese television was during the 2010 Chinese Bridge language contest, in which he received first prize and the eloquence prize. The show aired in front of a TV audience of almost 300 million. Bates has gone on to present TV shows for the Discovery Channel and has founded several companies in China. In 2017, Bates made the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
Early life
Liam Bates was born in the canton of Vaud outside Geneva, Switzerland to an American mother and a British-Zimbabwean father. At school he spoke French. He later went on to study Chinese and film at the University of British Columbia in Canada.Television career
Following Bates' Chinese Bridge success, in September 2010 he joined The Travel Channel China as their newest host, where he began a regular travel series filmed throughout the Chinese countryside. His first shows focused on rural life in Hunan, Guizhou and other Chinese provinces. Each show had Bates spending a week living with farmers and learning about their local cultures.In 2011 Bates and 'The Travel Channel China' team spent two weeks in his home country of Switzerland, filming several aspects of Swiss life: chocolate-making, Alpine cowherding and cheese production, Swiss military. The resulting television show broke numerous records in China, with the first 30-minute episode registering 1.5 million views on video-sharing website Youku alone. Bates became more widely known in China than in his home country.
In early 2012 Bates began a new series, A Love for Adventure and the Last Tribe. In this show, he travelled around the world seeking out small tribes who have maintained their traditional lifestyles in order to learn their survival techniques. In 2016 Bates completed filming of a new series for the Discovery Channel, "Expedition X: Silk Road Rising".