Over the past three years, everyone has gone through a unique journey. We unconsciously became travelers of time, looking out the window at the sky, sometimes clear and sometimes gloomy clouds pressing over the city. This world shouldn’t be like this. We don’t like this divine script, everyone has a story ten thousand times better than this.
But perhaps a person is always destined to cross the desert in order to reach a new oasis and encounter the long lost songs of birds and the fragrance of flowers.
2023 has arrived, and life may have made people understand that the road to distant places is never paved with smooth marble, but we must still keep up our spirits. Nowadays, life will return to its original free state, and some people have also begun to be eager to try. They urgently need poetry and distant places to wash away the dust in their hearts, and the word “travel” has been added back to their wish list. That was a long-awaited impulse to meet the world.
Travel is not only about where to go, but also about faith, courage and passion, and more importantly, about freedom.
01 Looking around with novelty, this delicate world belongs to me
The story of travel is like a metaphor.
In the past three years, we seem to understand more than ever how free people were in the past – they dared to go, they wanted to go, they could go, and then they left. Sometimes things are that simple. A beautiful and certain news is that the days of leaving whenever you want are about to come again.
From any perspective, travel can be said to be a ‘non essential’ option in life, it has nothing to do with the pain and itch of ‘essential life’. But as the poem goes, ‘The human world is composed of countless non essential elements.’. We can walk, we can cross borders, we can sprint to anywhere, this is a allowed and long lost ‘freedom’. Freedom is often thought to be non-existent without experiencing it, but once tasted and experienced, it becomes a necessity of life, inseparable.
Apart from the displacement of ancient soldiers, the migration of officials and the singing of poets while walking, travel did not appear in the cultural genes of ordinary Chinese people. It was not until the beginning of this century that free travel became a cultural fact. Looking back on that period of time may help understand the significance of travel for everyone today.
That was an ‘enlightenment era’ of travel. At the beginning of the century, people used their feet to create a bigger world. At that time, Hong Kong could finally be seen, and the sea breeze in Victoria Harbour did have a unique flavor. This city, which had been away from the embrace of the motherland for a long time, would be as handsome as a doll in the eyes of people at that time. Singapore can also take a walk. That is a beautiful city country that speaks both Mandarin and English, and the barrier to communication is not high. People have heard that it is a temptation to visit the legendary Lion City for several days for only two thousand yuan.
For ordinary people, there is no need to understand what is happening behind society, but life undoubtedly has an additional “non essential” option – they can go wherever they want to go. So, there were people traveling everywhere.
If you ask what the meaning of travel is, perhaps it is travel itself. No journey is impossible, but step by step stepping into a world can broaden one’s inner space. It’s not the kind of openness that comes from feeling suffocated and going out for a walk, but rather, this delicate world belongs to me.
Afterwards, the world map of ‘me’ continued to expand. Within a few years, the enthusiastic Chinese began to travel in Asia, Europe and the United States like a nomadic people. They walked in pairs or groups through ancient or modern cities, gazing up at the stars on exotic nights, basking in the sun on distant beaches, watching people of different cultures and skin colors, smiling and nodding to them.
The opening of outbound travel routes one by one reflects how curious people are about the outside world. It has to be said that people always see the world from their own emotional perspective: everything is packaged in the impression of “exoticism”. The legendary Leaning Tower of Pisa in Tuscany, in the eyes of people at that time, was as “charming” as the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
This is a youthful era, yet memories are always coated with a layer of gold. In those years, tour groups also gradually took shape. Although people later remembered that those “duck chasing” style group tours were somewhat urging people to “come and go in a hurry”, the world was still slowly opening up. Like a dim map in a game slowly illuminated by light, people gradually broaden their horizons and become unstoppable in their hearts.
