Saddling up for adventure

In January, a chivalrous young man who just finished traveling by horse and foot from Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to the southwestern city of Chongqing－nearly 4,400 kilometers－in an adventure spanning more than half a year, set off on his second arduous journey by hoof and foot from Chongqing to Yunnan province.

While millions of young people in China are tied up with a nine-to-five job and a mortgage, increasing numbers have the courage to seek a different lifestyle.

For 29-year-old Yue Xiaoyun, with his tanned skin and cool smile, the adventures would be lonely but for the presence of his sole companion－a horse named Hotpot.

In May 2021, Yue gave up his business in Chongqing to embark on his quixotic quest－the first leg by train to Yining, Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture in Xinjiang.

There, with the help of a Kazak herdsman, he bought a locally bred horse which cost 32,000 yuan ($4,710), and rode it from Horgos－on the border with Kazakhstan－to Chongqing's Fengjie county, his hometown.

The pair got across the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, the Hexi Corridor, the Qilian Mountains and the Qinling Mountains in Northwest China's Gansu province, passing through Sichuan province and finally reaching Chongqing. The journey was roughly 4,400 km.

To overcome long hours of boredom, Yue started posting videos on Douyin, a popular Chinese short-video platform. Soon, videos of the pair went viral online. Now he has won more than 10,000 followers.

"I never expected that I would be known by the public," says Yue, adding that after graduating from Chongqing Technology and Business University in 2016, he worked and started a business in the city but didn't feel fulfilled. His primary goal was to simply steel himself through a tough journey, for he used to be sluggish and lacked perseverance.

Yue says he usually started off at 9:30 am and rode eight to 10 hours per day. But sometimes it took longer to reach an inhabited place where he could pitch a tent for the night and where there was grass on which Hotpot could graze.

Most nights were spent in the wild－except for a few occasions on which they stayed overnight on a farm or at an inn.

Yue says he enjoyed the hardships, learning to make it through rain or snow.

Once, to help Hotpot recover from a sore on his back, Yue himself carried the luggage, which weighed more than 20 kilograms, and led the horse for more than 1,500 km－nearly 40 km per day. He suffered nerve damage in his inner thighs and feet in the process.

"Hotpot has a free spirit, and so do I," Yue says.

After a more than one month's reunion with his family for the Chinese Lunar New Year at home, on March 8, the relentless young man set off again with his loyal friend, Hotpot, on a planned journey of more than 2,500 km from Yunyang county in Chongqing to Shangri-La, Yunnan.

"I could have earned a lot by promoting goods online but I refused," says Yue, adding that rather than becoming an online influencer who dwells on influencer marketing, he prefers to "think broader and become a useful person for society".

Born in a village in Fengjie, Yue has deep love for rural areas. He says the traveling, mostly in China's rural areas, has given him a chance to reflect on what he can do－possibly public welfare livestreaming for agriculture, rural areas and farmers in the country's rural revitalization.

"I wouldn't be able to accomplish the journeys without the help of a lot of people," says Yue, adding that some friends from the internet and a great many local farmers provided food and water, both for him and the horse, looked out for their safety and offered suggestions at difficult moments.

"There's no point in hurrying on with my journey again," says Yue.

He reveals that in his second journey, which will pass through Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, he wants to slow down the pace and go deep into remote rural areas, and look for what he can do.

Last year, in Longshan county, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture in Hunan province, Yue met a shepherd couple in their 60s. They just lost a son who died from uremia, and had two mentally challenged sons to look after. The senior man was physically disabled and the family lived in a shabby shelter.

Yue left 500 yuan, half of all the money he had, to the family. Later he mobilized a voluntary fundraising among his internet friends via livestreaming and donated a further 1,210 yuan to the family.

Unfortunately, just a few days after he started his second adventure, Yue found cracks in Hotpot's hooves. So he led Hotpot for more than 400 km in over 20 days in the mountain areas from Hubei's Enshi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture to Tongren in Guizhou.

About half a month ago, to let Hotpot recover as well as it could, Yue suspended the journey and found an abandoned building in Tongren's Wanshan district, where he could unsaddle Hotpot and let it eat grass freely, brush oil onto its hooves and soak them with medicine.

"Now we are enjoying a four-story villa in the mountains," says the happy-go-lucky man. He says to live in the moment is a wiser decision than risking his companion's health.

After they became well-known on the internet, the pair was invited to attend a China Central Television show in Beijing this month, which has been postponed due to a pandemic resurgence in the capital. Yue says when the show is done, they will possibly go back to Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture from Beijing by truck, and finish the rest of the trip.

He plans to take Hotpot to this year's Ili Heavenly Horse International Tourism Festival, one of Xinjiang's biggest annual events involving local horses that is held in Zhaosu county of Yining, Hotpot's hometown, to find Hotpot a mate, and help the local herdsmen to promote their rural products.

"Life is short and I'm just doing what many others want to do," he says. "As a Chinese saying goes－a man should be independent at the age of 30. Now the vision is more and more distinct."