Travel

The journey, not the destination, that counts

By Liu Shinan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-01 10:11

BYLINE? LIU SHINAN

The road winding its way in front of me looked endless, emerging from behind a slope at one point and disappearing into a misty bamboo jungle at another. Sometimes, it scraped by craggy cliffs high on the edge of the gorge overlooking the ribbon-like river down in the distance; sometimes it rolled away along the riverside in the gloom of the valley, rising and falling as it crossed tributary streams and dodged old villages.

I was driving on a road next to the Qingjiang River in Enshi, Central China's Hubei province, on a trip to the mountainous prefecture on an overcast day in mid-April. The gloomy weather and challenging road conditions did not dampen my enthusiasm. I liked the feeling of ascending and descending and curving along the country road in my Citroen car.

Lonely roadside cottages built with grey stone slabs stood in quiet contrast to green wheat seedlings and yellow rapeseed flowers on hill slopes; white masses of mist rose from valleys to separate the bluish dark mountains in the distance from one another in changing hues; a group of young boys and girls dressed in a riot of colors, who had finished classes in a primary school, broke the quiet in the mountains with their cheerful chatting and cackling.

It was a vacation in its true sense.

Tourism has boomed over the past decade or so in China as incomes have risen. Places of historical significance and geographical fame are popular. "Been there" is the mindset of most tourists. I have the same mentality, too. Most of my travel destinations are also tourist attractions, although I often enjoy the "course" more than the destination itself.

By "course" I mean the route and scenery to get to the destination. Discovering beautiful areas and immersing oneself in them is worthier than having my photo taken in front of a gate or a rock tablet inscribed with the name of the attraction.

A good example is what the Enshi people call "the Grand Canyon", a newly opened tourist venue featuring precipices, virgin forests and karst fissures and caves. However, I did not reach it because of fog, the poor road conditions and the lateness of the day. I turned back but did not feel much regret; I had enjoyed seeing and taking photos of the imposing gorge, mist-clad mountains, quaint cottages and verdant fields along the way.

That is the true joy of traveling, making the journey and desiring pleasure without having to arrive.

And there is the driving. Over the past decade or so, China has built excellent expressways linking provincial capitals and major cities. Driving on these highways is really pleasant so long as you ignore the tolls charged at the exit or at the pass between provinces.

The western Hubei section of the Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway is certainly worth trying. The 320-kilometer mountainous section was "one of the most difficult highways to build in the world", for it tunnels through 14 mountains and spans 13 deep valleys of "extremely complicated geological and topographical conditions".

I drove on that expressway last month. On the 198-km section from Yichang to Enshi, I felt awed by its 247 bridges and 25 tunnels.

That was a major part of my vacation to Enshi - a trip to visit the place where I was born more than six decades ago.

Liu Shinan is a senior editor with China Daily.

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page16)