If life is likened to a long run, then 2016 is the beginning of Mai Xiaodu's change of track.
He was 27 years old and had a name that was often mistaken for a girl. He lived a decent life: he had a girlfriend who had been together since college, several well-paid Taobao shops, a car, a house, and the most rebellious thing was to fight for girls as a teenager, and the farthest place he had been was shanghai, more than a hundred kilometers away.
He has many good qualities: hard work, hard work, sincerity, and good at business. But he's also a vague-looking man drowning in the rolling red dust — you can't tell him anything glorious, and it's hard to imagine a maverick future.
In the eyes of outsiders, Lin Meng province will run all the way along the established track: getting married, having children, having more and more abundant material conditions and more and more stable life, he will inevitably feel the fading of passion and the dullness of oil, salt and vinegar, and then, like most people who are good at self-consolation, in the process of fighting boredom, they will convince themselves with the philosophy of life that "plain is true".
However, Lin Mengsheng himself did not think so.
In October 2016, Lin Meng province registered an account for "Mai Xiaodu Driving to Africa" on Watermelon Video - Mai Xiaodu was the screen name he had used for more than ten years, and "going to Africa" represented his dream at that time.
Since then, ordinary young Lin Meng province has disappeared, replaced by the video blogger Mai Xiaodu who traveled the world with his girlfriend. He doesn't have an unforgettable face or an astonishing eloquence — but he enjoys both the 1.8 million followers on the watermelon video site and the mountains and blue sea thousands of miles away.
The experience of Mai Xiaodu in the past two years is one of the many inspirational stories on the watermelon video, and it is also the most energetic one - who can resist the temptation of a distant place? Who doesn't yearn for a life where they can travel the world?
What's more, before leaving, Mai Xiaodu, like many people who suffered from gains and losses, had been confused and wandering, and he had also hesitated and doubted in different choices. The sample he provides is the process of an ordinary person harvesting freedom, that is, the process from "Is my life going to live like this" to "I am satisfied with my current life".
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > "I'm afraid my whole life will pass like this."</h1>
The story, of course, starts from the beginning.
Three years ago, Mai Xiaodu was still a shopkeeper who felt that he would "die suddenly at any time" - these five words are not nonsense, but Mai Xiaodu's truest fear. When he saw similar news, he could always think of himself. "I'm afraid I'll do the same one day."
Running a small shop for three years, Mai Xiaodou's business is good, even if many small businesses are struggling in 2015, he can have an annual income of half or sixty thousand. But the cost is also obvious. Throughout the year, Mai Xiaodou is so busy that he does not even rest during the Spring Festival, working more than fifteen hours a day and not sleeping soundly.
His daily living area is a warehouse of sixty square meters, and the people he contacts most every day are couriers who come to send and receive couriers and delivery workers who deliver meals - and in fact, he does not even eat takeaway time. Usually, every morning when he wakes up at ten o'clock, he has to deal with the early customer consultation, and he has to start packing goods until 1 p.m., and he can't eat the first meal of the day until 4 p.m.
"Too tired, too tired." Mai Xiaodu's body sounded an alarm that it was extremely incompatible with his age: his weight was constantly increasing, and his cervical spine was so poor that he often felt electrocuted. When the business was stable, he occasionally watched videos taken by travel bloggers. Seeing them go crazy all over the world, he grew more and more with a sense of urgency about time.
"I'm afraid my whole life will go on like this." Mai Xiaodu said. In the second half of 2015, he gradually came up with the idea of "giving up opening a store and driving around the world". This was strongly opposed by parents.
They advised Mai Xiaodu to open a shop too hard to go to the civil service examination, why did he have to give up his job? In their original conception, travel is a cash-burning business that only goes in and out.
In Mai Xiaodu's own heart, the two forces of "freedom" and "making money" are also at war. "On the one hand, I have always had income before, and now I have no income at once, and I have to paste money into it." Another aspect is that I have not traveled out of the Bajing, I just look at how people play on the Internet, foreign languages and environments are strange to me, I have never taken that step, I am wondering if I have the courage to go out. Mai Xiaodu said.
After hesitating for half a year, in early 2016, Mai Xiaodu finally decided to go out and have a look. He and his girlfriend went to Xiamen first. When they graduated from college, the two wanted to travel to Xiamen, but they were shy at the time, and the trip dragged on for several years before it was realized.
Later, the two played in Yunnan for more than ten days. In Lijiang, Mai Xiaodu saw the snowy mountains for the first time, and he thought it was too beautiful. When the weather was fine, the two of them lay in the courtyard next to Lugu Lake, not having to do anything, not thinking about anything.
"I think life should be like this. Why be so busy? "Life in these two places has had a huge impact on Mai Xiaodu. Soon, he was playing in Thailand from north to south for twenty days.
After these two trips, the hesitation and lack of confidence that had involved him disappeared. He learned about his ability to travel, and he also had more hopes for the vast world outside. He decided to abandon his previous closed and narrow life and chase the stars and the sea.
<h1 class="ql-align-center">
"Earnings from filming as travel expenses" </h1>
Mai Xiaodu's life has changed completely. At first, he would dream that he was packing his bags, but soon, that sense of freedom to do whatever he wanted dominated his daily life.
In the small town of Český Krumlov, McDougal originally wanted to punch a card and leave, but he stayed two more days because he liked it too much; on The Thai island of Lanta, he could spend more than a hundred yuan a night to live in a two-story villa on the edge of the sea; in santa claus village in Finland, he suddenly found out that Kirkones in Norway could catch king crabs, and he drove over excitedly, although he could not catch fish because it was not yet the season, but he did not seem to be upset.
"As long as I'm on the road, I don't have to go anywhere." McDonnell says he enjoys the feeling of doing whatever he wants while driving without any plans. Sometimes when you get to a destination, you don't want to go to the next destination, and sometimes you don't know where you will be in the evening when you leave in the morning. "But it's not aimless, we have a main line."
In Mai Xiaodu's initial plan, the goal was to drive a Car with a Chinese license plate to Southeast Asia, then Europe, Africa, and finally the Americas. And because the videos of other travel bloggers have deeply influenced Mai Xiaodu, he came up with the idea of filming his own journey. He began to learn shooting and editing techniques.
The first time I went to Southeast Asia to shoot, the material was in a mess, and Mai Xiaodu did not know how to start for two months. The second time he went out again, he gradually understood what situation should be shot with a tripod and what situation should be handheld.
At first, they posted videos on traditional video sites, updated once a week, with one episode lasting thirty minutes. The video takes a long time to make, but not many people watch it.
Until a chance, Mai Xiaodu edited the eighty-day journey in Southeast Asia into four or five minutes of wonderful clips and sent it to the watermelon video to try it, and unexpectedly received 20,000 views that night.
A month later, he earned nearly three thousand dollars. By the second month, that number had become more than ten thousand. McDougal thought it might be a good idea to shoot a video of the trip. "Insist on recording the real travel experience every day, insist on sending, maybe you can rely on these earnings as travel expenses in the future."
In Mai Xiaodu's watermelon video, he rarely talks about the meaning of travel, nor does he make too many interpretations of the cultural landscape he is not familiar with.
He shows the real life of the journey from the perspective of ordinary people: how much beef and mutton can be eaten for 100 yuan in Africa; what kind of room can be lived in 300 yuan in northern Europe, where travel costs are high; what is the experience of camping in the car at minus 20 degrees; what is it like to cook rice abroad in the wilderness...
Mai Xiaodu's short video is full of details of the accumulated texture of life, he is not showy, not arrogant, and even answers the questions of netizens such as "Why can we make money by sending videos" are frank and frank.
"In the beginning, because we couldn't cut any good videos, we sent some travel life online. Slowly, I found that many people will think that although you are not as exquisite as the TV station, you can express very real feelings, and you still like us. Mai Xiaodu said.
He found that Watermelon pays attention to the civilian spirit of video transmission, and also understands and cares for the audience on the other side of the Internet. "A lot of my audience is the same people as before me, watching other people's travel videos and wanting a journey. They may want to go out too, but they just haven't gone out yet. ”
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > "I can go anywhere I want to go this way"</h1>
Relying on the income from more than 3,000 short videos posted on Watermelon Video, Mai Xiaodu has completely covered the cost of traveling for two years and six or seven hundred thousand. The attitudes of parents who discouraged McDonald's travel around the world have also changed subtly. "Since you can make money while playing, you can try it, maybe you will make a difference in it."
Of course, for Mai Xiaodu himself, the significance of shooting videos is not only to make money, but also to the joy of life. On the Swedish highway, someone flashed lights in the back from time to time, and Mai Xiaodou drove to the service area only to find that it was his fan on the watermelon video;
Also in Sweden, the owner of the homestay happens to be a travel blogger, after he posted Mai Xiaodu's car to social networking sites, the capital Stockholm even spontaneously launched a small range of interactions "looking for Chinese self-driving cars"... Mai Xiaodu gradually felt his influence.
Driving to Tibet last year, in the territory of Ganzi, Sichuan Province, Mai Xiaodu carried several hitchhikers. After the video was uploaded to Watermelon, he got more than 2 million views. "It feels like we've done good things and received a lot of praise." This made Mai Xiaodu become a more sharing person.
He said that he used to go out just to play for himself, but now he will help others as much as he can. In the Sahara Desert and the Nordic snow, when he sees people trapped in a car, he will go over and pull, and backpackers will not refuse to take a ride. "Traveling is not only your own business, but also doing things that are good for others," he said. ”
Now Mai Xiaodu is on the road for six or seven months a year, and the remaining months are in his hometown of Ningbo to deal with work and rest. He is very satisfied with his current lifestyle of making videos while traveling.
"On the one hand, there is income, and on the other hand, you can go to any country I like. After the visa is processed, you can go to New Zealand tomorrow and Australia next month. There are outputs and profits on the road, and I can go anywhere I want to go in this way. ”
McDougall's next stop is Spain. After driving in North Africa last year, he left the car at a friend's house in Madrid. On this trip he planned to drive back to China. What are some of the fantastic moments of this trip? Mai Xiaodu did not know. All he could say about travel was what had already happened.
Last December, McDougal drove from North Point to Tromsø, Sweden. Three or four hundred kilometers of road, close to the Arctic Ocean, everywhere is a white expanse. Sometimes he could see local cars approaching him, and sometimes there were only children playing with sleighs and deer that appeared by chance. Because the camp and the hotel were closed, Mai Xiaodu could only sleep in the car wrapped in a sleeping bag at night. In the middle of the night in the wild, it was cold and quiet, but you can look up at the flowing aurora. The aurora was green, and at the edge of heaven and earth it turned purple.
The universe spread out in front of his eyes, and Mai Xiaodu also felt the charm of the distance again.
/ Creative Life /
In the past three years, hundreds of thousands of creators from all over the world have grown up with Watermelon Video. They came out of the field, from the podium, out of the rolling wheels, to this side of the screen, sharing knowledge, sharing skills, sharing life. We're going to build a column that explores the life and story behind those shots.
If you're interested in which creator on the watermelon video, you can also leave us a message.