He has passed through Shenyang twice in 15 years, once at the start and once at the end. According to the rules of the Guinness World Records headquarters, he cannot go home. Yesterday, Zheng Jianwei, a native of Shenyang who had just returned to his hometown, shouldered a 30-jin backpack and started a new journey.
In 15 years, he has walked over 210,000 kilometers, worn out more than 700 pairs of shoes, ruined over 30 backpacks, and traveled through all 33 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, covering more than 2,700 counties and cities, collecting over 6,000 postmarks from different places. Zheng Jianwei has become the No. 1 hiker in the world. "No one has surpassed me yet, and no one will in the future, because I will keep walking."
Hasn't been home in 15 years
His wife was once injured by robbers, leaving her with a head of white hair. Though physically strong and loud-voiced, he strides forward with big steps. The 59-year-old Zheng Jianwei appeared in camouflage at the September 18th History Museum in Shenyang.
In 1999, Zheng Jianwei set off from Tiexi, Shenyang, beginning his long journey of hiking across China. He was only 45 years old at the time, and his daughter was in junior high school. Now, his daughter is married with children.
He is a former special forces soldier who participated in the counterattack against Vietnam and retired as a lieutenant colonel in the army. After transitioning to civilian life, Zheng Jianwei worked as a cadre at the Shenyang Administration for Industry and Commerce. His decision to do this was related to an American veteran he didn’t know—Yasheng Buleiste. "The American veteran was also a special forces soldier. After retiring, he walked 53,350 kilometers within the United States, breaking a Guinness World Record. When I heard the news, my initial thought was simple—I refused to accept it. I want to be the No. 1."
In 2009, Zheng Jianwei broke the Guinness World Record by hiking 170,000 kilometers. But even then, he didn’t think about going home. "Originally, I just wanted to catch up with Yasheng Buleiste, to walk 100,000 kilometers in 10 years. But later, the more I walked, the wilder my heart became. Now, I want to break my own record."
"Shenyang is so beautiful, many places I can't even recognize anymore." He said, but he still can't go home. According to Guinness headquarters rules, you cannot go home or take vehicles during the hiking period.
When a reporter asked, "Don’t you miss home?" Old Zheng’s eyes turned a bit red. He said he couldn’t go home, but he meets with his family several times a year—the method being that his family comes to find him. One year, his wife and daughter came to Hebei to find him and even traveled with him for over a year. But that’s when the incident happened. While he was away, his wife was robbed in the evening, her gold earrings and 3,000 yuan in cash were stolen, and she was hit on the head with a stick, requiring a month and a half in the hospital. Every time he thinks of it, he feels particularly upset. Fortunately, his wife understands and supports him very much. Every reunion with his family becomes motivation for him to keep going.
So far, Old Zheng has spent 450,000 yuan on hiking. In his backpack, there are six 32-page notebooks stamped with 6,000 postmarks from cities, towns, and villages. He has written 2 million words of travel notes and given 1,000 patriotic lectures to the military along the way. His wish is to leave a Chinese name in the history of world hiking.
Hiking Adventures
With astonishing perseverance and survival skills learned in the special forces, Zheng Jianwei traversed the Tibetan Plateau, crossed the Taklamakan Desert, conquered the primeval forests of Southwest China, and explored the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia, enduring unimaginable hardships and dangers along the way.
Survived crossing the desert by drinking urine and discovered a large number of ancient Song Dynasty coins
Old Zheng said the Taklamakan Desert is a place where you can go in but may never come out. Many people die from lack of water. He prepared a 1.5-meter-long wooden board, strapped 150 jin of water to it. His backpack also contained water, plus 6 jin of chocolate. Aside from a telescope, he carried no other equipment.
In the endless desert, the highest daytime temperature reaches 50°C, while at night it drops below zero. Sandstorms are frequent. Compasses are useless in the desert. At first, Zheng Jianwei enjoyed the starry sky while drinking water—it felt poetic. But by the ninth day, his last bottle of water was gone. He began experiencing hallucinations, and the more he thought about ghost towns, the more they seemed to appear.
One day, he found ancient coins in the sand. As a coin collector, he immediately recognized them as rare Song Dynasty coins and was thrilled. More and more of these coins appeared—hundreds of them. He picked them up and put them in his backpack. By instinct, he thought these coins could make the rest of his life worry-free. But that thought quickly faded, and he began scattering the hard-earned coins by the handful, as he had no strength left and could barely stand.
He began drinking his own urine. By the time he walked out of the Death Sea on the 13th day, he had saved a bottle and a half of urine. To conserve it, he used it only to moisten his throat and chapped lips.
On the final day, when he spotted buildings through his telescope, he could only crawl. In the end, he managed to bring out only five Song Dynasty coins.
A python crawled over his body; he played dead to fool a wolf pack
Old Zheng prefers to travel at night—no noise, just peace. Once, in the mountains of Inner Mongolia at midnight, he heard rustling leaves about seven or eight meters behind him. Thinking it was a farmer’s free-range cow, he even tried to scare it off. Realizing something was wrong, he discovered it was a 2-meter-tall adult brown bear and a cub.
Without thinking much, he ran for his life, even losing his underwear in the process. After running 4 li (about 2 km), he finally stopped at a forest ranger station. The ranger told him, "You were really lucky. If it weren’t for the mother bear protecting her cub, you’d be dead."
Another time, in the northwest, he sensed movement behind him while walking. Too scared to turn around, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye—six wolves had formed a fan shape around him. So, he played dead, lying motionless on the ground. The wolves also stayed still, and after more than three hours, the pack finally left.
While crossing a tropical jungle, he found the scenery so beautiful that he wanted to sleep for a while. A sudden cold sensation woke him up—a 40-centimeter-thick, 4-meter-long python had crawled over his body.
Four armed robbers with submachine guns gave him a thumbs-up
In the mountainous areas of Yunnan, while night hiking as usual, he suddenly saw four men in trench coats by the roadside who said to him, "Hey buddy, how much cargo are you carrying? Just hand over a little."
Zheng Jianwei realized they must have thought he was a drug dealer. Just as he hesitated, about to pull something from his bag, one of the men pinned him down. From the pockets of their trench coats, four black gun barrels emerged—they were four submachine guns.
Zheng Jianwei laughed and said, "I’m hiking across China," and even showed them his stamp-covered passport and a five-star red flag. The four men carefully examined the travel diary and other items in his backpack, then laughed too, giving him a thumbs-up. "Buddy, well done. If we were in the city, we’d invite you to dinner."