An American walks in the Northeast

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2024-05-27 10:30Posted on the official account of Beijing characters

Paul Saropek is a man who has always crossed the border. At the age of six, he moved from the United States to Mexico with his father, and since then he has lived on the border: geographically and psychologically. He used to be a journalist and won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, but that didn't matter anymore, starting in 2013 with Ethiopia and making it through Africa, Central and South Asia, before arriving in China at the end of 2021. He has been in China for more than two years, and next, he will go all the way to the Americas. He has traveled more than 100,000 kilometers.

In mid-November 2023, I traveled 20 kilometers a day from Beijing to Liaoning on a provincial highway that had just snowed, with Paul. A 10-year hike may seem grandiose, but going into each day, as Paul says, is not big news. There's no big news all the time, just walking, relaxing, smiling, talking, and connecting with some of the people you meet along the way.

Text: Li Yuning

Editor|Huai Yang

November 15-19 Beijing-Benxi County, overcast ⛅

When I learned that I was going to go hiking with Paul, I anxiously gnawed off the last piece of good skin on my right thumb.

This is no ordinary hike, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a field exercise: go to the Tohoku in late autumn in November and walk an average of 30 kilometers outdoors every day.

Rewind five months to the fact that the interview was supposed to take place in Beijing, and the protagonist of the story was Paul Salopek, a 63-year-old American who traveled all the way from Ethiopia, Africa in 2013 to China at the end of 2021. Over the next two years, he traveled from Yunnan to Beijing in June 2023, following the Aihui-Tengchong population demarcation line drawn by geographer Hu Huanyong.

Paul's story was serialized in National Geographic. It's part of his project, called "Revisiting the Garden of Eden," which he wants to pay tribute to the first humans who left Africa millions of years ago. As for the final end of the hike, it is a place called Tierra del Fuego in South America, where the human footprint is at the end, and he has to cross the mountains and seas to complete the closed loop of civilization.

"It's an experiment in slow journalism," Paul said at the beginning of his column, adding that villagers, homeless people, and small traders along the way are the subjects of his documentation. In this era of high-speed operation, his pace is 5 kilometers per hour, and "if we slow down and look closely, we may be able to rediscover our world."

He once jumped down the snow-soaked desert hills of Africa at night, and once walked through the Wakhan Corridor in Central Asia during the day, his clothes and skin frozen. He presents a way of life that is rarely seen in Chinese society, and the exoticism and adventure make his life seem like the opposite of conformity and ordinary.

According to my original vision, this interview should start in the early afternoon, and Paul and I will talk as we walk through Beijing, and we can combine it with the popular City Walk to rethink our life here from a different perspective.

However, when I learned that Paul was not in a hurry to leave Beijing, the interview became "flexible". He had planned to stay in Beijing for a month, but two months had passed and he had not left. In fact, according to Paul's original plan, he should have completed the entire "Garden of Eden Revisit" tour in 2020, but his stop-and-go journey, coupled with various circumstances and accidents along the way, has continued for more than 10 years and is still going on. It can be seen that the plan cannot keep up with the changes, and delay is the eternal theme of travelers.

In November, I contacted Paul again and learned that he had left Beijing, had left Shanhaiguan, and was heading for the hinterland of the Liaodong Peninsula. "Where have you been lately?" I asked.

Half a day later, Paul replied to me with a string of English names mixed with a few pinyin township names, but I had never heard of any of them. He quickly sent another screenshot, "We'll probably be here next week."

Benxi. But it's not Benxi City that I know, it's Benxi Manchu Autonomous County under the jurisdiction of Benxi City. Paul sent another video - a few days ago, it snowed heavily in Shenyang, and he walked by the Hunhe River with a head of snow on his head.

It's like surviving in the wild, and it's not a regular "city walk". I shared the video in the work group, and the editor noticed the small bag he was carrying in the picture, "This definitely can't fit 10 years of stuff." Ask what if there's a back-up?"

Soon Paul replied, serious: "There is no reserve. And we're now walking 30 kilometers a day."

After a week, I put together a set of equipment, jumped on the G3691 high-speed train from Beijing to Benxi, and walked the distance that Paul took 3 months to cover in more than a day. When we arrived in Benxi County, there were only two things left for Paul and I to finalize, one was the meeting time, and the other was the meeting place. Urbanites are accustomed to living on these two coordinates, but to the first question, Paul's reply was "afternoon," and to the second question, he said, "Hey, there's no such place. Just come and come." He continued to send WeChat, "You take a car, go head-on, you can always meet."

Finally, I got into a taxi and looked for him along Provincial Highway 205. In fact, when you actually go out of town, there is no one on the road at all, so it is easy to lock on to the target: western faces, gray scarves, dark coats, and bulging backpacks. He ripped off his scarf, and underneath it was a smiling face, wrinkles piled together.

In a hurry, I extended my hand to Paul, and we shook each other very businessfully, and after a minute of the necessary social etiquette, Paul continued on his way, and I followed him, trying to keep pace with him.

It's just that the brain is still confused. Before leaving, I sent Paul several messages to confirm all the details, but Paul didn't answer, just told me to "relax".

"I know that as a journalist, you face pressure to 'get news'. I know this pressure myself. But as a peer, my advice is to relax. There's no big news along the way, and there's no drama," Paul wrote to me one morning. "The meaning of our walk is to record, to think, to write, but also to be patient. We wandered around in the process, which was itself a bit blind and random, and had nothing to do with the so-called planning and arrangement. If you're expecting the latter, you're only going to be disappointed."

Paul was reluctant to give any grand meaning to "walking," in which he spoke of walking as a small but necessary thing, saying, "By walking together, we have a better chance of survival." Later, he explained to me this sentence: Leaving Africa was the first step of human migration. Whether it is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster, generations can still move and survive. "So, walking is a trick that we've been practicing for millions of years, the easiest and most powerful way to move a tree to death, a person to move to live," Paul said. "If you have any problems, don't forget that we still have this way to go."

I understood something, but I didn't seem to fully understand. Either way, Paul was already the first to take the lead. And so the walk began.

Paul on the road Photography: Li Yuning

November 19 Qinghe Town, sunny ☀️

As the team moved on, Haotian, a young hiking buddy, slowed down and chatted with me.

Haotian's full name is Xu Haotian, with shawl hair, and he is Paul's hiking partner in the northeast. From the time they met in Shenyang, he has been with Paul for a month. Haotian took out his mobile phone to show me the route in the last few days: small towns, Guanmenshan Reservoir, and then passed through Caohezhang, Caohecheng and Caohekou Town, and finally arrived at Tongyuanbao, a total of more than 100 kilometers. "The goal is to get to Dalian in the south," Haotian continued, adding that Paul had recently reached the end of his trip to China, and in order to catch up with the progress, Paul and he walked 36 kilometers in one day at most. But fortunately, the progress is no longer urgent, "It should be more than 20 kilometers in the last few days, and I am not too tired."

Since his departure from Africa in 2013, with the exception of a small European island nation called Cyprus (which is only a little more than half the size of Beijing in the sense of administrative planning), Paul has not been alone. He believes that trekking buddies are also an important part of this hiking program. Most of the trekking partners are locals, who are more familiar with the road conditions and culture, so that Paul can get the most out of the local customs while maintaining walking efficiency. Companions also record what they saw along the way, which can be compared and supplemented with Paul's record. "It's not just my walking plan, everyone has their part." Paul said.

Paul has traveled with many people, journalists, academics, artists, outdoor people...... Most people who know him from books and reports have traveled with him out of curiosity or respect. In Djibouti, Africa, Paul also traveled with a man who was running for parliament in the middle of a national election, and they traveled through the desert, where they had to make daily phone calls to lobby for the election. "He didn't win the seat," Paul told me, "but he didn't mind, he said he didn't want to be in politics that much." When he came to Beijing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a media salon for Paul. After the meeting, Hua Chunying also told him that she wanted to walk with him for a while. Paul said that there was a lot of natural curiosity in her eyes.

The identity of the trekking companion also changes depending on the country and terrain he travels through: in Africa, Paul's companion is a nomad and a camel; When they entered Central Asia from Turkey, their partners became retired mercenaries, butchers in halal butchers, and hunters; In Pakistan, Paul was dragged by a trekking buddy to a traditional wedding, only to find out that he was the only guest in the room wearing a gown. When they arrived in the Indian peninsula, a group of young people followed—they saw a white man in the village, and they all wanted to come up and practice English conversation with him, and then pass the IELTS test to the United States.

In most cases, trekking buddies introduce each other to each other, and Paul doesn't have to go out of his way to find them. Only once, in Uzbekistan, he could not find the next hiking buddy and could only post on an online forum. Another time in Turkey, he was about to climb the mountain, but his original partner was injured. While resting at a café down the mountain, Paul meets a waiter who is interested in his journey and is willing to take over the work of his trekking partner. The next day, Paul waited for the young man who was going to go up the mountain with him, "still wearing a hospitality vest and a black bow tie."

When you arrive in China, your trekking partner also acts as an interpreter and guide. Haotian told me a small observation: the more I went to the big city, the more the team with Paul grew, and in Shenyang, the team once exceeded 10 people, even the senior executives of Disney China, and everyone formed a team to follow him on the "city walk" in Shenyang. But out of Shenyang, more often than not, there are only two of them in the team.

Pan Pan, Hao Tian and Paul Photography: Pan Pan

Haotian had never heard of Paul before he set off. He's still studying, and he's been out for a year, "but it's not a big deal, it's better to write slowly." In 2023, when the classes were all over and only the papers were left, I went to a bookstore in Shenyang to work part-time. After some time, he received a message from a friend who was Paul's hiking partner on the previous trip, and Haotian asked for leave from the bookstore, threw down the documents and set off. He thought Paul was a lovely old man.

Paul likes Haotian very much. "You should talk to him," Paul has told me more than once, "this is his homeland, and he has his own understanding of walking on this land."

"Why do you want to come hiking?" I threw the question to Haotian. After the novelty of the first few kilometers wore off, I began to digest the phrase "nothing big news". The roadside is the same mountain and land, and there is no difference in the essence between this village and the next. The shops on the road closed early, or simply never opened, we passed by the iron gates of a house, the yard was built with the same iron buds, every dog was barking in the door, they were only familiar with the passing cars, not the people passing by.

"I don't want to write a paper," Haotian grinned. "It's good to follow the hike, I don't have to worry about eating and drinking, and my other friends still envy me."

After listening to my few words, Haotian floated away briskly. It wasn't my intention not to answer, but after five kilometers, the fatigue of the hike was apparent, and I could feel the weight of every piece of clothing, every thing in my bag, and every kilogram attached to me - perhaps, I didn't need two full bags of warm babies, and the heat generated by the hike was enough to offset the cold in the northeast. In fact, I was sweating so much that the soles of my feet felt like they were going to catch fire. In addition to the heat, it was the grind of a new pair of shoes.

After walking long enough, the body has already formed inertia, and any slight change will take a huge amount of physical strength. Paul and Haotian are always two meters in front of me, they seem to be discussing what "equipment", "oxygen", is the surrounding factories, but no matter how much I can't hear clearly. Every step of the way is rushing, and I have to trot from time to time to stay behind. But after keeping up, Ming Mingmai had the same frequency, and without taking two steps, they were back two meters away.

Before the sun went down, we finally reached the edge of town. One morning I met Paul's driver in Qinghe City, and we met again in the evening. "Did you really make it all the way?" The driver was shocked, he drove over for less than half an hour, and arrived at the place at noon. Haotian nodded.

When I got back inside the house in the evening, I had a few blisters, all on the heels, a curse on the hike in new shoes. Haotian smiled when he found out, and quickly brought me a first-aid kit, which contained Yunnan Baiyao, scissors and bandages. "If you put a pillow on your calf, it won't hurt so much the next day," he told me again. I nodded, and when I was done, I lay down on the bed.

Nov. 22 Small town, cloudy 🌥️

Paul decided to spend a few days off in a small town, sending the latest manuscripts to editors in the United States, and dealing with expiring visas. We stayed in one of the only hotels in the county that accepted foreigners, right in the center of the county, so it was easy for Paul to go downstairs and find someone to talk to.

There were many moments when Paul still had a "foreigner" side. He settled his breakfast with cereal and cold milk, didn't drink the most famous haggis soup in Benxi County, didn't drink hot water, and skipped the blood sausage we ordered during the meal. Originally, he liked to drink 9 yuan 9 coffee, but when he heard Haotian joke that there was an exhausted migrant worker sitting in the 9 yuan 9 coffee shop, Paul immediately waved his hand and said that he would not order it in the future. He also missed lunch and kept himself in his room writing.

On a cloudy afternoon, Paul set aside time for me to talk about America and his past. Born in Southern California in 1962, Paul took a turn for the worse in the late '60s when the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and his father's political ideals were disillusioned. As a result, Paul was still in kindergarten in California the day before, and the next day he was loaded like a piece of luggage by the adults and turned into a child running wild in the Mexican countryside.

After his father's death, he returned to the United States, where he soon found school boring and began to wander around, using the farming skills he learned in Mexico to work on various farms in the United States. He lived a very modest life, had nothing but a second-hand motorcycle, and always lived at a friend's house or in an unfurnished apartment. To earn a living, he would go out to sea with commercial fishing boats to catch shrimp, flounder, and scallops.

Paul said that if he hadn't been a journalist, he would have caught fish for the rest of his life. But on a trip to the sea, his motorcycle broke down, and in that town he worked to earn money to repair his car, and rented an apartment to an old lady who was said to have been the lover of the writer Vonnegut and offered him a job at the local community newspaper. Paul started out in the police alert section, where he discovered that he loved going to the field, then freelanced for a while, and then moved to National Geographic's Washington headquarters in the '90s. In 1998, Paul joined the Chicago Tribune, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Interpretive Reporting for two articles on the Human Genome Diversity Project. Three years later, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his work in Africa.

Around 2010, Paul was in his 50s and was planning to leave the declining journalism industry to do something more than just journalism. "We seem to have a lot of information, but we lose sight of the specific meaning behind it," Paul said. But how can this meaning be recovered? He tried to start with the real story, but couldn't write a word.

After thinking about it for a while, Paul returned to the original story: the travelogue is the earliest narrative type in human history, and the earliest travels are the collective journey of the human species out of Africa. So, he set off. He understated, "I just need to take a walk, too."

I asked Paul if this way of walking is necessary in order to develop a comprehensive and in-depth understanding in this age of information. Paul shook his head, "I don't encourage people to imitate me, it's a stupid idea."

This austereic clumsiness manifested itself in Paul very early. For example, he resigned from his job in National Geographic for two years because he only went out to conduct a field interview, and there are few similar precedents in National Geographic; While working as a foreign correspondent in Africa, he rowed a kayak to Congo to report on the ongoing war while other colleagues competed to interview presidents and officials.

Paul said that he felt like the boy running wild on the Mexican border in comparison to Southern California, with straw sandals on his feet and accented English in his mouth, accustomed to freedom and asceticism. While walking, he lived next door to a truck driver, "only on a wall as thin as paper," and sorted out materials with a loud snort. Haotian once spent the night with Paul in the temple, the dormitory conditions were average, the quilt was shaking, and it was full of ladybugs. Haotian shook the bugs all night, and Paul moved the stool to the socket and concentrated on typing for the night.

The rudiments of material life are as simple as ever. Until now, Paul still uses a fanny pack from Africa, and the corners of the bag are polished; In the late autumn of the Northeast in November, he still has the summer pair of hiking shoes with holes on his feet. When it snowed, he taught me to put a plastic bag in my socks and change them when they were wet, which is the secret to keeping my feet dry.

In the 10 years he walked, Paul could remember only two injuries, one in Africa, where he jumped down a valley and broke his leg, and once in India, where he vomited and diarrhea. The rest of the time, he walks, interviews, and, of course, records, rain or shine. So far, he has amassed more than 100 copies, most of which have been sent back to the United States, the most recent of which is in his pants pocket, ready for interviews. Paul also kept some notebooks in his waist bag, along with a ZOOM-brand voice recorder, a computer, another dozen pens, a first-aid kit, some nameless shampoos used in cheap hotels, a cigar lighter for camping in a remote area, and two quick-drying clothes, and followed him.

Photograph of Paul's All Luggage: Li Yuning

After dinner, we said goodbye in the lobby of the hotel, and while I turned off the lights, Paul sat down and continued to write his story until two o'clock in the evening.

The historian Luo Xin was one of the first people in China to know about Paul, who had just entered Asia at that time. When he went to China, Luo Xin also joined the walking team many times. They once walked in northern Shaanxi, crossing mountains and mountains during the day, and sleeping together in caves at night. Luo Xin and I also shared this moment of "weakness" as a writer: when he was ready to sleep, Paul was still typing, and even wanted to put on a headlamp to read at night, but was finally persuaded by Luo Xin. That night, Paul wrote until three or four o'clock in the morning. At 7 o'clock the next morning, Paul called him up again.

When he began to write "From Dadu to Shangdu", Luo Xin regarded Saropek's walk as "the greatest hike of today" in the prologue, and regarded his own hike from Dadu to Shangdu as a leisurely walk, which should only pay tribute to him.

Luo Xin (left) and Paul (right) Photo: Pan Pan

November 24 Guanmen Mountain, snow in ❄️ the evening

After a short break in the city, we set off again and joined the team with two new friends, who are teaching assistants at NYU Shanghai and have just completed Paul's writing workshop this semester. Today's trip is 23 kilometers and we have to enter the Guanmen Mountain.

It's Friday, the day before it had cooled down a lot, and the real winter is coming. Carrying large bags on our backs, we walked through the morning market with fresh mushrooms and frozen fish, past the mutton soup restaurant, and through the crowds. We walked past the vehicle management office, the old furniture store, the hardware store, the tire store, then the forestry bureau and the highway engineering team, and then we crossed a bridge, and when the brick floor turned into a concrete road, we officially said goodbye to the city. In the past, I was used to taking the high-speed rail, and I often replied to WeChat, and there were only windbreaks and large areas of farmland outside the window, and when measured by walking distance, the land unexpectedly had room to stretch and spread. There is no big news, but small changes happen right now.

Now, our group walks on both sides of the provincial road, and the autumn harvest ended at the end of last month, and there are no people in the fields for a long time, and only the minibus will pass us from time to time along the way.

"Eighty percent of the time, I walk in this kind of place," Paul said. His favorite way to walk is unhardened dirt roads, the soil has its own elasticity, and it is easiest to walk on it, but in recent years, due to the vigorous construction of infrastructure in various places, most of the ground has been paved with asphalt and cement roads.

In the late summer and early autumn of 2021, Paul left Myanmar to enter China from Yunnan, but due to the policy closure of the port, he had to get on a plane from Shanghai for the first time in many years. It has also become Paul's fastest journey since he started walking in 2013, one day he was on the streets of Mandalay's fierce clashes, and the next moment he had to fly out of Myanmar for a day more.

After a seven-hour flight, Paul showed up at Shanghai's Pudong Airport with a few kyats in his pocket. He realized that the modern world was full of artificial plastic products everywhere, and there were huge billboards scattered in the sparsely populated airports. He was sent to a quarantine hotel 40 kilometers from the city, where he was only allowed to order takeout, but the last time he lived in the city, the ride-hailing app had just come out. Unable to operate the software, Paul ended up contacting a friend in Taiwan and ordering a hot cup of tea across the strait.

After two weeks of quarantine, Paul received a homegrown vaccine and flew back to Yunnan to Umbrella Village, near the city of Tengchong, Yunnan, which was the closest Chinese village he could reach to Myanmar at the time. He just wanted to walk the whole distance on his feet. After many months, he once again stepped on the ground, the marigolds were in full bloom, and Paul wore a straw hat and stood in the warm sunshine, feeling his vitality again. Yunnan has become his favorite province in China, unlike the chaos in Myanmar and the fastness of Shanghai, Yunnan is warm, warm, natural, wild, and the fields are also heavily planted with corn, much like his hometown of Mexico.

During his two years in China, Paul spent most of his time walking between the villages, where the epidemic prevention policies are often not as strict as in the cities, and he is strangely one of the few people still on the road while the world is stagnant. He faced imminent quarantine several times, but avoided it until the coronavirus became irrelevant.

He walked as usual, never paying attention to his equipment, wearing his shoes until they were rotten, and everything on his body could be found in a supermarket in almost any Chinese county. Another hiking partner, Pan Pan, met him for the first time at the entrance of the Forbidden City, Paul wore a cotton T-shirt and shorts to visit the Forbidden City, looking no different from ordinary American tourists, Pan Pan was a little disappointed, "not as tall and strong as I imagined."

Paul at the Forbidden City Photo: Pan Pan

But that's what happens when walking becomes a part of life. Paul didn't use sunscreen, his skin was pink from years of exposure, his hair was white, and his body leaned forward with his chest leaning in from his heavy loads. His body is not at all like the gym practice, but like any old farmer in the field in China, a little rickety, a little belly, but one pair of hands can pick up hundreds of hoes. "Walking naturally adjusted every muscle in my body to the best fit," Paul says. Haotian's evaluation was more direct, "Paul seems to have evolved, and he can live well just by photosynthesizing every day."

Paul, who was walking in the sun, stopped in front of him, and on both sides of the road was a new village, and it was rare for a person to emerge from it, Paul pointed to his mobile phone and asked something, and the teaching assistants were on the side to help translate.

I hurried a few steps, and the sun was getting bigger, and the people began to sweat again. "Paul wants to ask for a shortcut," Haotian came back to tell me that there were many cars on the highway, and it was still not safe for people to walk on both sides. What's more, the road is built for sports cars, and being slender is a matter of one foot on the accelerator. But people are different, we can flip and jump, and we can save some distance by taking a shortcut, which Paul sees as the "walking wisdom" to resist the wheel society.

But the other party did not understand. "Where are you going?" He asked a different question. After getting Haotian's answer, his face became strange.

"Walk over? So far? Why don't you take a minibus?" Afraid that we wouldn't find it, he pointed out the direction of the station to Haotian again, "You go and take the train, you can get there in less than an hour."

Paul smiled and shook his head, he was all too familiar with the question. "It's okay" is one of the few Chinese he can speak, which means he has to find it himself. After saying goodbye to the villagers, he and Haotian got together with their mobile phones, and after a few minutes finally studied a path on the map, Paul took a big step and led everyone down the road to the river, I sighed, and finally it was time to survive in the wilderness. Soon we entered the village again, and the dervishm Paul turned himself into a barbed wire fence and reached over to pull me.

"Does this count as trespassing?" I was a little hesitant, still struggling with the upturned wire. In reply, Paul winked at me, an almost sly expression for the first time in the time I had known him. His hand was strong, and he lifted me up.

Shortly after climbing over the barbed wire, I photographed Paul and Haotian photographed: Li Yuning

November 25 Caohezhang Town, after the snow, sunny ☀️

Pan Pan, a hiking partner who has been walking with Paul since Beijing, was enthusiastic and cheerful, and on the other end of the phone, she told me three things that impressed her:

The first was the end of a documentary shoot, where the Shanghai Radio and Television crew spent two years in China recording his walks. At that time, the team had been filming for 3 days, and it was just about to take the last shot of walking across the bridge, and after the team left, Pan Pan and Paul had to adjust and rest for a while. They had been hanging little bees all day, and while they were waiting for the equipment to be set up, Paul suddenly approached and whispered to her, "Pan, do you want to run over this bridge with me?" Paul gestured forward, "Do you want to get rid of the photographer together?" Wait until I'm counting down, and we'll run across the bridge as fast as we can."

Three, two, one! Paul laughed and ran up, caught off guard by the camera behind him, and had to shout "Wait a minute" while jingling the bell and carrying the equipment to catch up.

Paul was proud: "I wanted to end the trip in my own special way, but I didn't want them to photograph it."

The second was when they walked to Panjin City, where Pan Pan and Paul saw someone selling old-fashioned chicken cakes on the side of the road, with a sign that said "Welcome to taste". Pan Pan was a little moved, and pulled Paul along, but before he could react, several of them had already lost their stomachs. She was a little embarrassed, "Why don't we buy some?"

Paul asks rhetorically, isn't this free? Don't buy it, let's run!

Another time happened in the village. Paul had a "milestone plan" as he walked, and every 100 miles (about 160 kilometers), he would take a panoramic photo, record a video, and talk to the first person he met. He always asks three questions – Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? The responses were varied: some said they were going to a specific location nearby, some were going to Europe, and some said, "I'm not walking like you do, I'm just going to the car."

Walking to Liaoning, Paul sat on the side of the road and chatted with people Photo: Pan Pan

The "milestone" that Pan Pan encountered happened to be near the village clinic, and Paul wanted to talk to the female doctor on duty inside. Hearing that he was an American, the doctor's attitude was much colder, "Lao Mei does not want to see us Chinese", and warned the people in the room to "don't talk nonsense".

Pan Pan was a little embarrassed and planned to leave, but Paul was not in a hurry, he sat down opposite the doctor and asked his companions to translate another sentence for him. "I've been having trouble with my eyes lately, can you help me take a look?"

She was obviously stunned for a moment, but still said that she couldn't see it. Paul was still smiling, "So what medicine should I drink?"

"You don't need to take any medicine, just chrysanthemum tea." She continued to be perfunctory. Paul asked, "Can you give me a little bit then?"

The doctor stood up and grabbed a small bag of chrysanthemums from the pharmacy. Paul was very happy, pulled her to talk about the brewing method and medicinal effects of chrysanthemum tea, and said that his eyes were indeed getting worse and worse.

It was at this moment that Pan Pan really felt that "something was loosening". The doctor began to teach Paul to make flower tea, not to let him pay, and to check his pulse. After a moment of silence, the doctor sighed and said Paul, your liver is not good, your kidneys are not good, and your spleen and stomach are not good...... He also said that it seems that this American is also an ordinary person, and he is also sick, and his health is not good.

Another hiking buddy in attendance, named Frank, was a young investment banker in the city, but at the health center, his financial English was not applicable, so he had to translate to Paul in frustration, she said you are dying.

Paul laughed. The doctor looked at his tongue again, prescribed a lot of medicine, and repeatedly told Paul, "This one should be taken, that one is not here, but there is this medicine in the county town ahead, you remember to buy it, you must take it for three months in a row."

The doctor wanted to leave Paul and his party to eat, and when she learned that they were going on, she stood at the door and waved Paul goodbye. Pan Pan looked at Paul and said that she felt that the faces of people in the city were blurry, but the faces here were clear, but she didn't know the answer either. Paul, you say, "Why?"

Paul just laughed, "I feel that way too."

Haotian told a similar story. They arrived in a county town together, and the hotel rarely entertained foreigners, so they were a little wary of Paul, and asked him to go to the police station to report first, and only after agreeing to check in, but Paul pointed to Haotian and joked: "No, no, we are brothers, but I look a little exotic." After Haotian finished translating, the young manager smiled and was relieved.

On this day of walking in Caohezhang Town, 3 hours after departure, Paul proposed to find a path again, and he and Haotian got together with their mobile phones, and finally succeeded in researching a "shortcut" after a few minutes. Paul strode as I watched as everyone headed for a fork in the road that led to the "Yamazato Mei Guesthouse".

Sure enough, soon, a locked door stopped us. The autumn leaves season in Benxi has passed, and the homestay people in Guanmen Mountain go to the empty building. But Paul didn't care, and when he saw the river outside the road, he jumped down and began to lead us along the courtyard wall along the river. But soon, the path under your feet was washed away by the river. We had nowhere to go, and the wall next to us was two people high. "Let's go back," Paul quickly decided, and he set up a position under the wall to lift us up one by one. Haotian cooperated tacitly, and quickly got up to it like a monkey, followed by a girl with more hiking experience among the teaching assistants, and I was the third.

Paul patted him on the thigh and motioned for me to step on it. The caged dog in the yard was still barking loudly, but this time I didn't care if it was an "illegal break-in" and just tried to climb up. Haotian, the assistant girl, more people pulled me up, Paul's legs were firmly supported underneath, and I didn't move at all even if I stepped on it a few times.

The fourth, another teaching assistant, was pulled up while shouting, "How can I step on you?" Finally, there was Paul, and each of us tried to reach out and drag him up from underneath. After coming up, everyone was a little embarrassed, Haotian's glasses were crooked, my shirt was rubbed with a piece of wall ash, the assistant girl's hands were worn out a little skin, Paul was the worst, and there were four deep footprints on the thighs of his pants.

But we all laughed and looked at each other, and even the barking of the watchdog was drowned out by our voices.

I suddenly remembered that one afternoon when I was resting in the small market, Paul and I were sitting in the only "Moon Boat Cafe" in the town chatting, and Haotian was flipping through "I Deliver Couriers in Beijing" on the side. Paul liked the café with its own rooms, and he said that we were like a temporary editorial office.

Paul said of his last years as a foreign correspondent: "You can imagine that the longer people stay on the battlefield, the more likely they are to become part of the war, to get used to the deadly stimulus and not to go back to normal life. I've seen a lot of journalists who have been covering the war for a long time end up in a tavern all year round, nagging about their exploits over the years, when in fact it's just a few old things and bad things."

Don't be numb, don't let your heart dry up, Paul said. "Hatred and difference will never be eliminated, but fortunately this is also the most boundary-breaking moment in our human history, and every time I walk down the road and see people one by one, I think, I can love you, I want to know you, this is the response I can give. Why not? If we can overcome the barriers, we can tear down those walls."

Paul himself used his legs to prop others up and pushed them against the wall Photo: Li Yuning

November 27 Shenyang, after the snow, sunny ☀️

The farewell to Paul took place on a clear, cold afternoon. After that, Paul's trekking team will continue on foot to the southernmost tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, where it is expected to arrive in Dalian in the last days of 2023. I hopped into an old van and started traveling back to Benxi at 60 km/h, then by high-speed train to Shenyang and then to Beijing after dark. This 100-kilometer walk is already my limit.

Before leaving, Paul winked at me again, "Remember how you feel when you leave, probably the most surreal experience of your life lately."

He was right. More than 10 minutes after getting on the bus, the villager uncle drove through the village we left 4 hours ago, and half an hour later, the van had driven more kilometers than we had in the past 3 days combined. An hour later, I arrived in Benxi City. Next, the world will evolve at an accelerated pace, all the way to modern times by high-speed rail.

But my body didn't keep up with the speed of the great change, and every step was vain, as if in the clouds. Carrying a 35-liter bag, I appeared in the transit waiting hall of Shenyang North Railway Station like a backpacker who had just left no man's land. The quick-drying clothes on the body have not been changed for 2 days, and the warm layer in the middle has been the same for 10 days, and it has begun to become like a second skin. I still have plastic bags strapped to my feet, but now, in the quiet of a high-speed train car, my feet rattle and look rather inappropriate when I move — modern society has its rules, and Paul's approach seems out of place.

I gave up on the idea of getting up and walking around stretching on the high-speed train, and just put my hands back in my pockets. But Paul's spiritual heritage of walking is pervasive, with a pile of loose toilet paper in the left pocket of my coat, and a few sheets that I wiped my nose but didn't have time to throw away, and I don't know if I didn't find the trash can at the time, or if I didn't even have the strength to make the gesture of "throwing". In the right pocket is the rice bar snack that Paul handed me earlier today, and he loves the pot and the rice stick, which is not heavy and filling, which is the conclusion he came to after eating all the food on the shelves of the Chinese commissary. I felt choked after a few bites, but I didn't bother to throw it away, just thinking about putting it away and refilling it when I was hungry. Now, the puffed rice is evenly and scattered in my pocket, and I touch it, and it's a little sticky.

The whole journey from Benxi to Beijing is nearly 800 kilometers, and it only takes 3 and a half hours to get home, excluding transfers. This journey has taken Paul from August to the present.

In just a few days of walking with Paul, my feet grinded out 8 blisters, my forehead was sunburned because I had been wearing a hat, and what was even more sad was that although I walked an average of more than 20 kilometers a day, I was always tired, hungry and thirsty, and I ate enough to support every meal, and when I got home and went on the scale, I gained 3 pounds.

But I naturally accepted the changes. Early in the morning of his departure, Paul talked about a book he had read when he first started his career, and he was not yet thirty years old at the time, and the book was called "The Snow Leopard," which was written at great length by Peter Matheson, who chronicled his journey with biologists in search of endemic creatures such as rock sheep in the Himalayas. But Paul says that from time to time, Matheson would write about his deceased wife at the end of his travelogue. He would put a lot of effort into writing about Nepal's climate, architecture, and religion, but the last sentence was probably that I remembered that I also bought a small Buddha statue for my seriously ill wife and put it at her bedside.

As Paul spoke, we were going up the mountain in the morning light, and the snow-covered winding road winded in front of us, and the scenery after turning was obscure. I was so anxious and out of breath that I didn't have the brains to think about what Matheson or Paul meant.

When the blisters on my feet were so thorough, I didn't know why, I opened "Snow Leopard" again. This time, I suddenly felt something that had been static flowing slowly. In fact, not long after that conversation, we managed to turn to the other side of the mountain, and our vision suddenly opened up, the sky was high and the clouds were light, and the distant mountains were surrounded by snow and mist.

In fact, whether the snow leopard can be found or not is not the real intention of the writing of "Snow Leopard", just like Paul's walk, although there is no big news, but to this day, everyone who has traveled with him can still tell one story after another that happened on the hike. In an old-fashioned and sincere manner, Paul tries to take us every day with our footsteps to bridge the gaps that have opened the gaps. I successfully climbed the first barbed wire fence in my life, fed the sheep for the first time, and drove up the mountain for the first time, and the snow I stepped on was even down to my calves. Until now, half a year later, I still have in my mind the faces of everyone I have communicated with on the road, just like Pan Pan said, extremely clear. The ground is soft, the snow clicks on it, the head is hot when you walk uphill, and the sheepfold is warm and smelly.

Even Pan Pan's memory was inexplicably restored to my mind, it was October 2023, and the leaves were yellow but not falling. She trotted toward a wood, ready to turn around and take a video of Paul walking towards the camera.

Just as she crouched down to start shooting, a gust of wind blew and a leaf fell in front of the camera. Hearing the wind blowing the leaves, Pan Pan froze for a moment, and Paul walked over without focus.

She came to her senses, stopped Paul, and showed him the video: "The leaves have passed in front of my camera, but I missed you."

Paul laughed, and he said he knew. "Do you hear the sound of leaves? Isn't it wonderful?"

Pan Pan said, "How do you know?"

Paul smiled wider, "Because I saw you laugh, and this is the most beautiful smile you've ever had in days."

In December, when Haotian also finished walking, I asked him how he felt about returning to his old life, and this person was just giggling: "Modern life is really good, and I finally got back to my human appearance." But if Paul was there, he would have laughed.

On Christmas Eve 2023, Paul arrived in Dalian. It was the last leg of his two-year trip to China, and Pan Pan, Haotian, and almost all of his hiking buddies who could spare time rushed over to say goodbye to him. (Note: On May 26, 2024, Paul arrived in Dalian again, planning to complete a section of the road that he had not been able to walk before.) He will then go hiking to South Korea, Japan, and eventually to the Americas. ）

When Paul first set out from Africa 10 years ago, he wrote about Cristina Calderón of Tierra del Fuego in the first article of his National Geographic column, who was the last South American tribal indigenous on earth, and that Paul should have reached the end of the South American world in 2020 and met with Christina. But the reality is that Paul is still walking with us in China in 2023, and Christina, who also passed away in the winter of 2022 due to complications caused by the new crown. The world is unpredictable, and no one waits for him on Tierra del Fuego anymore.

But this is perhaps the most basic proposition that Paul and we face as we walk every day. We make real contact, say a sincere goodbye, and step into the day again.

Filmed by the film crew of Shanghai Radio and Television Documentary Center

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