Yu's footprint

There’re thousands of times I want to go away and leave this life behind. There’re thousands of times I want to start revival on a totally different road. There’re thousands of times I want to move from one place to another to abandon the hypocritical society...That is what Chris thought about. So did I.

Reality is just like a terrible huge rift. So many cuts and wounds are contained in it. One day you may realize all things you hold tightly in your fist are not real. When you wake up in the morning, you may suddenly have no idea what you really want and what you actually get. You may forget what’s the meaning of this life you’ve lived for so many years. So you chose to leave. A huge backpack but with few money, a strong heart but has a little hope, a lot of people met during the journey but always walking alone. That was the way of your life. You called yourself a Supertramp.

You tried to find the truth of life. Closed to the wild nature, kept a clear destination in your mind, bravely got away from every companion on your road, and at last hided yourself into a freezing space. Chris, have you found the answer?

“Happiness only real when shared.” This was what you wrote by the end of your life. Life itself is an endless mystery, the meaning of it is love and happiness. You used your brief life to understand that.

Travel or tramp is not a way to escape. Though there’re so many disappointment in the life, there’re also so many things to treasure. Like family, like neighbors around, like the love from God. Every time when I want to go somewhere alone to escape from the gloomy reality, I know I’ll remember Chris.

I cannot express how much this film means to me, I only know each time when Chris’s weak smile appeared by the end of the movie, I had a strong wish to cry. Some people don’t really understand why he chose such a lonely life in the wild, but I do. Actually I feel this movie is made for a solitary group of people in this world, I am also one of them.

You really need to watch it: Into The Wild.

It’s a bad title. If I were you, I won’t like it. It makes me think about a long boring list of goods and things. As an unprofessional traveler just like me, you can find a lot of unimportant things in my bag. You’ll find a heavy Bible; I believe I may need it when something happens. For example when I fail to find my way, God will be easier to recognize that I’m His people and send me an angel. You can also find a pile of modern world’s productions ---- my DV’s charger, my cellophane’s charger, my MP3’s charger... I hate long black wires, but I have to play a role in this hi-tech tragedy ---- they are always lying in my bag in a mess and reaaaaally make me crazy. This is not the worst. Finally you will find a group of heavyset guys. I also don’t understand why I have to carry so many books. Most of time I only holding them in my hands, admiring their colorful covers, spelling the writers’ names, and then putting them back into my bag. I’m always not in mood to read them, but I still keep carrying them! It’s just like a woman always goes out with a boring guy because she believes she should dating. Sounds ridiculous! When I put down a book on my table of the train to Luoping last month, it cought my neighboring passenger’s attention. It was a book about the history of love and sex in Europe. The reason I carried it with me was that I felt if a book described how the people flirted 300 years ago in a historical way, it must be an interesting travel companion. A young couple who were sitting right next to me stared the book cautiously and kept silent during the whole journey. They must thought one who study this on the train should be some kinds of freak, and they felt the topic of my book had some kinds of relationship with them and this made them worried. But actually I even didn’t touch the book for one second.

There are thousands of times I wanted to carry some more useless things on my way. For example, instrument.

Since the day I decided not to be a violinist, I felt I killed a way to survive by my own hands. I felt I was a murderer. I murdered the chance or excuse to play violin when I didn’t want to do my homework, I murdered a good job I could choose in the future, and the most important, I murdered my longtime hobby. My feeling about this didn’t stop until a guy in my school quit class and went away with his guitar. From that moment, going away with my violin slided into my mind. I dreamed to go to an unfamiliar place and played music there. I wasn’t sure if I had courage to stand in the middle of a square and played violin, but I admired those artists who did that. Always confident, always free, always share their music with others. I had so many ideas, like play a same song in different places and make a record of that, or just travel from one place to another with my violin, add music to my journey.

But up to now, during all my travels, among all my packages, there’s no space for a violin.

Since the day I became a university student, I have had a strong feeling to escape from my university. I don’t know why. Maybe my university is too close to the place I live (only 30km), that terriblely proves I still live in a tiny circle. Or maybe I hate my new campus, it’s a wasteland and I know I shouldn’t be there. So I choose the only way to realize my escaping ---- TRAVEL.

I don’t have so much time to spend during a journey. I have class from Monday to Friday, and have to be back to my dorm in every Sunday evening. The only method I can figure out to travel is playing truant. Luckily, my major has some relationship with tourism, so I get a perfect reason to travel around and that’ll make me feel less guilty.

Sometimes I only carry a small bag, without too much money, without fellow travelers, even without knowing where to go. I often find a place on the map where is no more than 300km away from my city, and then start to approach it. For me, there’s no destination, no schedule during my journey. I may keep walking for a whole morning, towards somewhere I don’t know, or may stay in a certain place for quite a long time, without doing anything.

I went hiking near a river two weeks ago. I got a very negative attitude the night before that day. When I lay in the small hostel, the fragments of memory flooded back. All I could see in my mind was the dark side of my life. I remembered the feeling when I failed my college entrance exam ---- such helpless and despair. I believed that I deserved a better university, not the one I was stuck with now. When thinking all of this in the darkness, I felt really down. The next morning I went to the riverside. It was a still place. There’re almost no other travelers there. I walked along the river, listened to the sounds from thousands of insects in the forests, and noticed a group of waterwheels in the clear water. The waterwheels looked so old, I bet they existed there for more than a hundred year. They still kept moving, without complaining about their destiny, without any bad mood, just kept moving with their beautiful songs. Thinking about those things appeared in my mind last night, I felt ashamed. I even didn’t know the meaning of life a couple of hours ago! I’ve got everything in my life. I had my family who love me all the time, I got so many wonderful friends, I got someone I love, I got a life that I almost needn’t to worry about anything… But I still complained and wanted to escape from everything!

I’ll still travel. Maybe sometimes I have to quit some classes, but I know the real meaning of traveling. It isn’t escaping from the realist life; on the contrary, it is trying to find the meaning of my life and myself. The blog should be a piece of land to show my footprint, or some pages of book to mark the process of growing up.

Like what I said, my trip has no direction, no destination. It’s a kind of life style. Welcome to my life!