A photo taken by Neihe while traveling in Guizhou
The inland river traveled according to Xuanzang's route
The river is in Aoluguya
Kawakawa took a photo in the cabin with a travel diary
Inland rivers run through the rainforest
After returning from a trip to the southeast of Guizhou, every year during the Qingming Festival, Neihe can receive spring bamboo shoots with rain and dew sent by the grandmother of Dong Village 1970 kilometers away.
"I've never seen a tourist like you who can play" is the most common comment she received during her travels. On every trip, the river is well connected to the locals.
As a "strong traveler", she did not choose to lie down and spend her holidays, and she also refused the "special forces trip" of Internet celebrities. In order not to waste every minute of annual leave, Neihe will spend half a year planning an annual vacation trip that is "more tiring than work", "harder than military training" and "busier than anthropologists".
She searched for Hugo's home in Evenki Hugo in Aoluguya in the Great Khingan Mountains; She drank sweet tea with local women in Nyingchi; She changed to various types of ferries to visit the Yangtze River, just to find the traces of Li Bai's travels thousands of years ago; She crossed the Yellow River on a sheepskin raft and experienced the waves felt by archaeologists and explorers a hundred years ago......
Listening to Neihe tell her travel story, it seems that "the south and the north of the world" have become close.
Dig deep into the literature
Find hidden corners and retrace the path of the ancients
For a 7-day trip, the river takes more than 150 days to prepare.
Planning travel strategies, Neihe does not swipe social networks or watch Internet celebrity attractions, but digs deep into various hidden corners of the destination in historical books and documentaries.
In order to design a travel route to Xinjiang, she "reviewed" Xuanzang's route in ancient books. Neihe said: "Every time I don't know where to go during the holidays, I look at Xuanzang's westbound route, which is a great travel experience so far." So, thank you Xuanzang. ”
Before leaving for Tashkurgan, she read two editions of Travels in the Heart of Asia; In order to retrace the Locke Road in Gannan, she took the first edition of the Dunhuang book "Archaeology of the Western Regions" in 1921, reproducing Stein's travelogue a hundred years ago and experiencing the sheepskin raft on which Stein once sit.
"If I could walk the same way I traveled thousands of years ago, it would be really exciting." Neihe recalled that when designing the trip to the Yangtze River, she first read Li Bai's life to see where the love of "the light boat has crossed the ten thousand mountains" came from, and deliberately found out what kind of "ape" was the "ape" that "the apes on both sides of the strait couldn't stop crying", which was used to review the historical memory of the Yangtze River.
Of course, in addition to relying on the "help" of the ancients, the faithful records of modern people are also the signposts of her "untouched body, far away". When making plans for a trip to the Yangtze River, Neihe also read many books and documentaries about the Yangtze River, "On the way to work, I watched He Wei's "River City"; When I got home from work, the screen at home was full of Yangtze River water, and I watched "Goodbye Yangtze River" twice. ”
In addition to the trip to the Yangtze River, Neihe also watched a lot of text interviews and documentaries for the trip to Aoluguya in the Daxinganling Mountains, and even met friends in Aoluguya in advance.
In her opinion, only by doing her homework can she have an exclusive and detailed travel experience. Even when she was waiting for her departure, she felt happy, fulfilled and full every day.
In the travelogue of the Yangtze River journey, Neihe describes the waiting days as follows: "More and more information and materials are like crystal clear small droplets, slowly converging into a small river, flowing quietly and surging. ”
With a "literature review-style" travel preparation, when the river stands on the land of the destination, it is like returning to one's spiritual homeland. Neihe said that when the scenes in the book, the footage in the documentary, and the scenes in front of her were stacked together, her heart was even more shocked, "Weijia, Hugo, Liu Xia, Maria So...... Those people I know, they live on this land. ”
Come across
Listen to stories that haven't been written
The journey of the Yangtze River, the inland river started from Chongqing, went all the way down, and enjoyed the scenery on both sides of the Yangtze River along the way.
Throughout the trip, they change to different means of transport. Every day, she and her friends drive their vehicles and then change boats for someone else to drive to their next destination, and she experiences a different feeling with the crew on various types of boats.
The river would chat with the captain in the cockpit, read the captain's voyage diary, and even learn to sail with the captain. In this way, they marched all the way along Wushan, Wanzhou and other places.
For Neihe, some unexpected encounters during the journey will make the whole trip more memorable.
On a boat along the Yangtze River, Neihe came across a Yangtze River tour team from China National Geographic. She showed her original strategy to the team members, and when the team members saw such a detailed and compact itinerary, they said that the itinerary of the inland river was even more intensive and rich than the itinerary of "China National Geographic".
Neihe also likes to verify old travelogues, which allows her to find new pleasures in her travels. Neihe said that a travelogue from a hundred years ago recorded a phenomenon that the Muztag Glacier contradicted conventional physical knowledge: in the snow-capped mountain glacier, it was the coldest at noon and hotter at night.
She thought it was a clerical error on the part of the author, but when she arrived and measured the temperature in the morning and evening, she found that the travelogue contained a real phenomenon, which made her even more amazed by the wonder of nature.
Every trip to the inland river is not a "light" way to look at the flowers and check in. She is used to interacting with the locals and listening to stories that have not been written, which she thinks is proof that she has been to a place.
In Manchuria, on the border between China and Russia, the vast majority of tourists choose to visit the country. Instead of checking in, Neihe chatted with the owner, an enthusiastic Northeast lady, in a small shop selling Chinese and Russian goods on the border.
Their topics were from China-Russia border trade to friendship between the Chinese and Russian peoples. By the time we finished talking, it was already past the store's closing time. Before Neihe left, the eldest sister took out a bag of food and coffee and gave it to her. "Let's add a WeChat," said the eldest sister, "I have never met a tourist like you." ”
In the southeast of Guizhou, Neihe met a person in charge of poverty alleviation products in the local area, and talked to him by chance, and after listening to him tell about each peripheral product, Neihe decided to push off all the itinerary and follow him.
"Can you please sit in the passenger seat, I want to go around your product factory a few times." Neihe said to the person in charge. So, in the stunned eyes of the accompanying driver and his fellow river passengers, an unplanned journey began:
They drove to the indigo factory in Guizhou Qingyulan Ancient Method, and saw the largest plant indigo dyeing base in Asia, which is connected to a large number of poverty alleviation targets. Villagers living in the mountainous areas with limited access to transportation have moved to the vicinity of the factory, and the government has provided them with jobs in multiple sectors, where women can also find work such as dyeing, weaving, and making works.
In Xishuangbanna, Neihe found a local hunter Zhou Yi as a guide. During the process of going up the mountain together, Neihe listened to Zhou Waist talk about his "hunter skills" with relish: how to judge the changes in the weather through clouds and sky, which plants are edible and which plants are not touched.
On the border between China and Myanmar, because the waiter in the restaurant could only speak Burmese, Neihe even guessed a plate of unnamed delicacies; In Chengde, she put on her overalls and walked into the glass-making assembly line......
Neihe likes a quote from Life magazine: "Go to life, see the world...... To see and be moved, to see and be educated...... During the journey, feel the long-lost vitality, the kindness and great vitality of strangers. ”
Record your journey
Write down a 10,000-word "high concentration" travelogue
When traveling, Neihe will also post on Moments like ordinary tourists, but she believes that the "graphic positioning" in the Moments does not mean that she has actually been there.
During the trip, Neihe has always insisted on keeping a diary, "otherwise it will be easy to pass if the travel experience is too rich." ”
"After visiting the Kuizhou Museum, I learned that Du Fu had been in Chongqing for 500 days, and he had written poems almost every day." Neihe said that when it comes to writing a travel diary, she can especially understand Du Fu.
Back home, the river trip didn't end there. At the end of each trip, when she returned to Beijing, she would turn on the computer and quickly record all the intense and fresh travel bits and pieces to form a high-concentration travelogue. Usually, she writes about 10,000 words for such a travelogue.
She will also publish her travelogue on her official account, and there are not a few people who use "inland river travel" as a travel reference.
The travelogue she wrote in Guizhou four years ago still attracts travelers to explore all corners of southeast Guizhou; In 2022, the Xishuangbanna travelogue she wrote attracted many tourists to leave messages in the background saying that they wanted to go to the local hunting guide - the person who is "usually taciturn, but fully shows his astuteness and wisdom when he enters the jungle." ”
"If you can travel with emotion and record it in detail, your trip will never end, and you will always be on the road," Neihe said. ”
At the end of her 7-day trip to Guizhou, she looked through the thousands of photos on her mobile phone, including the homestay owners and chartered bus drivers who may not see her again in her life, the French people who temporarily joined her to travel with her along the way, the embroidery girl in the village, the staff who were sent on a business trip to southeast Guizhou, and the strangers in the village who exchanged cash with her temporarily...... "They are still 'live' in the circle of friends with the simple life in Guizhou." ”
Infinity
"My trip has no end"
Although the journey will come to an end, on many occasions, the river will still "reunite" with the previous journey.
At the beginning of 2024, Neihe saw the "Journey to the Yangtze River" by Guan Shanyue, a master of Chinese painting, at the National Art Museum of China. She saw the artist's work created after traveling along the Yangtze River in the 70s of the last century - a 30-meter-long scroll full of love for the motherland and hope for peace.
Neihe also saw an exhibit of "Three Gorges Cruise Ticket" designed by the artist at the exhibition, which reads "The light boat has crossed the Ten Thousand Mountains", and the memory of Neihe was suddenly pulled back.
Neihe also emulated many anthropologists as his travel idols.
"The modern anthropologist Torii Ryuzo is the real 'traveling man'." In 1902, she said, Torii Ryuzo completed his Journey to Southwest China, which recorded his journey from Hankou to Chongqing, via Qianyang, Yizikongcheng, Kunming, Yiliang, Lunan, Maitreya, Daliangshan to Chengdu, and then from Chongqing all the way down the Yangtze River back to Hankou.
"He observes the daily life of food, clothing, housing and transportation, and the names of various flowers and plants are like a number of treasures, he can not stay overnight, often rush to the next stop non-stop, in front of his itinerary, I know what is the real action."
For Neihe, travel is to open all the senses to the infinite distances and the lives of those who "relate to me", even if it is short. In 2023, after she returned to Xinjiang "with Xuanzang", she wrote a sentence: "I was also a traveler on the Silk Road." ”
659 days after the end of his trip to Xishuangbanna, Neihe received a message from a Kit hunter in the tropical rainforest early in the morning: "I dreamed of you, I have opened a new route here, and I have time to come and experience it." ”
This edition of the article / this newspaper reporter Zhang Zhiyi intern Li Ruijie
Co-ordinator/Lin Yan, Zhang Bin
Photo courtesy / interviewee, AI mapping, network screenshots