TV host keeps on globetrotting to see just how far he can go

Zhang Wei, a popular television host, is a happy wanderer who has made his native Beijing a way station ever since taking a job with China's only travel-themed satellite channel in 2002.

Zhang, widely known as Arthur, culled the name of a tragic romantic hero of Ireland-born novelist Ethel Lilian Voynich's masterwork The Gadfly.

"Then am I a happy fly, if I live or if I die", Zhang said, reciting a short verse from the book. The line came at the end of a letter the Gadfly wrote to his lover before his execution.