'Senior backpackers' trot the globe
- By Daniel Xu and Wu Jin
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China.org.cn, September 6, 2011
Finding happiness
Traveling through half the world has still taken a bit of a toll on the well-to-do senior couple's pocket books – and they aren’t finished. As long as their travel visa goes through, the veteran backpackers are looking ahead to their next adventures in the Middle East.
And to go on as far as they can, the depleted war chest may require them to sell their sunny home in high-rise complexes not too far from downtown Beijing. The couple said they are fully prepared to do so.
"A lot of people don't believe us when we say this, but we mean it," Zhang said. "Happiness to us is not about materialistic things like owning a property."
As for the feeling of home, Zhang said they have found it in each other instead of an address in Beijing. "It is home wherever we both are."
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Zhang Guangzhu and Wang Zhongjin stand in front of a world map on their living room wall. The couple, who know little English, backpacked through 40 countries in four years. [By Daniel Xu, China.org.cn] |
Yet the lifestyle of a bona fide gypsy does have its challenges. One time, Wang was careless of the altitude and caught a tough cold, for which she eventually had to go to an emergency room. Incidents like this have made both elderly travelers seriously consider the idea of death.
The couple said they leave their daughter a will every time they set off for a trip. "Death is usually a taboo subject for most Chinese. But I never think death as something terrible and would like to face it straight on. To me, death is only a change of the world," Wang said.
Zhang said he recently saw a report about another elderly travelers dying in a plane crash. To him and Wang, Zhang said that would be dying while doing something they both love the most, which is nevertheless a good way to go.
And should one leave the other behind? Wang said she would probably continue to travel, "to revisit the place that we once set our footprints on."
Zhang smiled quietly as he waited for his wife to finish clumsily explaining how she had wild imaginations, and he said, "That's exactly what I would do, too."
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