Travel

	Of all the races in the world, the Chinese are the most disinclined to travel. Even in times of famine, they do not lightly set outon the road to escape from hunger, preferring to stay in the same spot to eat grass, gnaw on tree bark, and swallow GuanyinTu.They are afraid that once they leave their homes, they may die on the road and thus lose their last right -- to die in their own beds. The better-heeled are even less willing to travel: instead, they hang a picture on the wall and claim to have engaged in "armchair travel" simply by looking at it. This is what is meant by the saying, "Being active is not as good as being idle." What this really means is, "there is nothing new under the sun." After all, what are the famous sights of great mountains and rivers, anyway, if not merely a few piles of stones and a puddle of water? I remember when I was a primary school student, going for a picnic in the wild was something that could set my heart beating with excitement. We would get all prepared well in advance, getting up early in the morning, falling in line and holding up our school flag, the band marching in front of us. A week after the picnic, we would even be required to hand in a composition with the title "Our Outing." Only then was the whole matter considered to have come to a satisfactory conclusion. Such was the solemn undertaking of a picnic! My maternal grandmother lived in the center of the city of Hangzhou, and in the eighty- some years of her life, she had never been to West Lake. At long last, she went, but by then she could no longer walk and had to be carried there. She never returned -she was buried in the hills by the lake.

	The ancients asked, " How many pairs of shoes can one wear in one's lifetime?" The idea was to urge people to pursue happiness while they could, and not allow thoughts about the number of shoes they might need to wear to deter them. But is traveling really an enjoyable thing, or is there something somehow aggravating about it? One cannot do without luggage when one is on the road. A bundle of bedding weighing twenty or thirty jin is the first obstacle that a traveler has to overcome. It should be tied up tightly and handsomely in the shape of a square with sharp, tidy corners, easily distinguishable from bundles that are loosely wrapped in cloth with the inside showing. This task alone is not for those of us who lack the strength to tie up a chicken. It sometimes happens that there are curious souls at internal customs who like to open up your bedding to take a look, and once the inspection is over, it is not that easy to restore it to its original shape. The ancients spoke of travel in this way, "Go when the mood strikes you, and return when the mood passes." For many people, once they have endured the process of rolling up their bedding, their mood to travel has almost run its course. In some countries, it is not necessary to carry one's bedding when one travels. Wherever there is a bed, there is a mattress; and wherever there is a mattress, there are bed sheets which can be washed and changed at any time. Travellers can come and go unburdened, and do not have to carry their bedding like snails carrying their shells on their backs.When all is said and done, carrying one's bedding is still not such an impossible task, but I have never heard of people carrying beds on the road. There are very few beds in the world that do not come with bed vermin, and I seriously doubt how much energy is left for touring after a whole night of giving one's blood to these bugs. I have a friend who designed for himself a set of seamless sleeping clothes that snugly covered his head and limbs. When he crawled inside, only his eyes were visible through the two holes in the front, and he was completely insulated from the world outside. The problem was, with these sleeping clothes on, he looked like a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I heard it said that when he came out in his sleeping clothes one night, a person who caught sight of him nearly fell dead from fright.

	A primitive means of transportation is not necessarily a source of trouble for travelers. I find that a huagan or jiazi che are much more interesting than airplanes. "The wonderful feeling of riding on the wind" is only possible for immortals. To travel in this mortal world, the criterion should be that one can touch the ground with one's feet. We like the sight of white clouds, but that does not mean we'd like to weave our way in and out of them. We like to see those hills that, as one poetic line has it, look "like a range from the front but a peak from the side, tall from afar and short when one gets close to them," but that does not mean we have to shrink the whole world into a miniature rock for us to toy with it. I regret never having rode on the "wagons with sails" that, according to Milton, could be found in China. No, there is nothing wrong with the primitiveness of one's means of transportation. The problem lies in the difficulty of securing service, and in dealing with drivers and boatmen. It goes without saying that one should watch over one's belongings, but one must be careful of bandits on the way, as well. When Liu Ling exhorted others to "bury me where I fall dead," he did not mean that he was ready to face an unnatural death.

	Although travel is beset with worries, there is nevertheless a lot of joy in it. Traveling is a kind of escape from the ugliness of human company. It is said that "the greatest recluse hides himself in the sea of humanity." Since we are by no means great recluses, we could hardly survive in that sea. Not only that: we also find it less than easy even to hide in our own homes. Confined to a courtyard house the whole year round, one hardly needs to look up to the roof to sigh; forced to look at the same face at home for twelve months of the year, one does not need to put on a grass cloak intended for cattle to shed tears. What you can see of the sky at home is but a small corner of it, and the cool wind and bright moon described as "inexhaustible" by the Song poet Su Shi are not to be had there. To fly a kite, you have to climb up to the roof and hold it up with a bamboo pole. To watch the sun rise or the moon set, you have to find a place not blocked by your neighbors. When you walk on the street, the people you see amid the hustle and bustle around you are either beasts in disguise or pathetic vermin. Given all of this, even if we lack the courage to let loose our hair and retire to the mountains, why shouldn't we at least pack up our toothbrushes and roll up our bedding for a few days of travel? Once on the road, there will be no escaping the pelting wind and rain, which then will so tire us out that we will return, having realized the truth of the saying, "one can stay at home in comfort for a thousand days, but leaving home for a short while is difficult." In this way, we will be able to tolerate temporarily that intolerable home, and once it becomes intolerable again, we can then take another trip. In this way, after enduring this cycle a few times, we will find our lives almost over.

	There is no escaping a feeling of loneliness on a trip, but loneliness also has a certain charm. William Hazlitt suggests in "On Going a Journey" that one should not travel with a companion: "If you remark the scent of a beanfield crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to look at it." An incompatible traveling companion is, of course, a nuisance, but human beings are indeed strange animals. When there are too many of them, we frown at all of their bustling about, but when there is no one around, we feel bored. One tends to shrink from senseless jabbering, but one also wonders whether clamping one's mouth shut the whole time will give one bad breath. On the road or in moments of silence, then, one somehow wishes to have someone for company. Only the spirits and animals can endure solitude, yet in our society, most of the people we meet are detestable in appearance and insipid in speech, and we do our best to avoid them. Out in the world of nature, on the other hand, one somehow feels that relationships between humans should be intimate. Some people who have traveled to the Rockies in the United States once told me that when they ran into other travelers in the mountains, everyone, regardless of age or sex, took off their hats as a rule to greet one other and exchange a few words. This is an interesting custom. It seems we only discover we are of the same species in the wilderness, for at ordinary times, we pay too much attention to the differences between us.

	An ideal traveling companion is hard to find, and a good friend in the living room is not necessarily a good partner on the road. An ideal traveling companion should possess many qualities. For one thing, he should not be too dirty, like Ji Shuye, who often "left his hair and face unwashed fifteen days in a month," and "would not take a bath unless he could no longer stand the itch." Neither should he be so obsessed with cleanliness as to clean everything with alcohol. He should not be as wooden as a statue, or as unresponsive as a dead fish that cannot open its mouth. At the same time, he should not jabber all day long, or snore throughout the night; neither should he appear unctuous or clumsy. He should be able to engage in conversation or laughter, and be alternately active and quiet. When he is quiet, he should sit by you wordlessly to watch the clouds and listen to the evening rain. But when he is active, he should flop like a fish on the grass! Now, tell me, where is one to find such a traveling companion?