Over the past 15 years, he has passed through Shenyang twice—once at the beginning of his journey, and once at the end. According to the regulations of the Guinness World Records headquarters, he is not allowed to go home. Yesterday, Zheng Jianwei, who had just returned to his hometown, once again shouldered a 30-jin backpack to embark on a new journey.
He has walked over 210,000 kilometers in 15 years. He has worn out more than 700 pairs of shoes, ruined over 30 backpacks, traveled through 33 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, and over 2,700 counties and cities, collecting more than 6,000 postmarks from various places. Zheng Jianwei has become the world’s No. 1 hiker. "No one has surpassed me yet, and no one will in the future, because I will just keep walking."
Haven't been home in 15 years
His wife was once injured by robbers, leaving her with a head of white hair. Though in good health, with a loud voice and brisk stride, 59-year-old Zheng Jianwei appeared at Shenyang's "September 18th" Historical Museum in full camouflage.
In 1999, Zheng Jianwei set out from Tiexi, Shenyang, embarking on a long journey to hike across China. At that time, he was only 45 years old, and his daughter had just started 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. The decision he made was related to an American retired veteran he didn’t know—Yasheng Brest. "The American vet was also a special forces soldier. After retiring, he walked 53,350 kilometers within the United States and broke a Guinness World Record. When I heard the news, my initial thought was simple—I wasn’t going to accept it. I wanted to be the No. 1."
In 2009, Zheng Jianwei set a new 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 Brest, to walk 100,000 kilometers in 10 years. But the more I walked, the more my heart grew wild. Now, I want to break my own record."
"Shenyang is so beautiful, I can hardly recognize many places." he said, but he still can’t go home. According to the rules of Guinness, you cannot return home or use vehicles during the hiking period.
When a reporter asked, "Don’t you miss your family?" Old Zheng’s eyes turned a bit red. He said he couldn’t go home, but he reunites with his family several times a year—the method being that they come to find him. One year, his wife and daughter came to Hebei to see him and even traveled with him for over a year. But that’s also when the accident 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 in the head with a stick, ending up hospitalized for a month and a half. Every time he thinks of it, he feels deeply upset. Fortunately, his wife understands and supports him immensely. Every reunion with his family is what keeps him going forward.
So far, Zheng has spent 450,000 yuan on hiking. His backpack contains six 32-page notebooks stamped with 6,000 postmarks from towns and villages across provinces and cities. He has written two million words of travel journals and given 1,000 patriotic lectures to troops along the way. His dream is to leave the name of a Chinese person in the history of global hiking.
Hiking Adventures
Relying on astonishing perseverance and survival skills learned in the special forces, Zheng Jianwei has traversed the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, crossed the Taklamakan Desert, conquered the primeval forests of Southwest China, and explored the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia—experiencing unimaginable hardships and dangers along the way.
Survived the Desert by Drinking His Own Urine, Discovered Ancient Song Dynasty Coins
Old Zheng said that the Taklamakan Desert is a place where you can go in but may never come out. Many people die there due to lack of water. He prepared a 1.5-meter-long wooden board to which he strapped 150 jin (about 75 kg) of water. His backpack also contained water, plus 6 jin (about 3 kg) of chocolate. Aside from a pair of binoculars, he carried no other equipment.
The endless desert reached a maximum temperature of 50°C during the day and dropped below zero at night. Sandstorms were frequent. A compass is useless in the desert. At first, Zheng enjoyed the poetic feeling of gazing at the starry sky while drinking water, but by the ninth day, the last bottle of water was gone. He began hallucinating, and the more he thought about haunted cities, the more they seemed to appear.
One day, he noticed ancient coins emerging from the sand. As a coin collector, he immediately recognized them as rare Song Dynasty coins and became ecstatic. More and more of these coins appeared—hundreds of them. He gathered them and stuffed them in his backpack, figuring they could secure his livelihood for the rest of his life. But that thought quickly faded as he began scattering these hard-earned coins by the handful—he was completely out of strength, barely able to stand.
He resorted to drinking his own urine. By the time he emerged from the “Sea of Death” on the 13th day, he had managed to save a bottle and a half of urine. To conserve it, he only used it to moisten his parched throat and cracked lips.
On the final day, when he spotted buildings through his binoculars, he could only crawl. In the end, he managed to bring out only five of the Song Dynasty coins.
A Python Slithered Over Him, Played Dead to Fool a Wolf Pack
Zheng enjoys hiking at night—the silence helps him stay calm. Once, in the mountains of Inner Mongolia, at around midnight, he heard rustling from the trees about seven or eight meters behind him. Thinking it was a cow from a nearby farm, he deliberately tried to scare it off—but something felt off, and he realized it was a huge brown bear, over two meters tall, and a cub.
Without thinking, Zheng ran for his life, even losing his underwear in the process. After running over four li (about 2 km), he finally stopped at a forest ranger station. The ranger told him, "You’re really lucky—if it weren’t for the mother bear protecting her cub, you wouldn’t have made it."
Another time, in the northwest, he sensed movement behind him while walking but didn’t dare look back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw six wolves forming a fan shape around him. So he played dead, lying completely still. The wolves also stayed still. The stalemate lasted over three hours before the wolves finally left.
While crossing a tropical jungle, he was so captivated by the scenery that he wanted to nap—but a sudden cold sensation woke him. A massive python, 40 cm in diameter and about 4 meters long, had slithered right over him.
Armed Robbers Gave Him a Thumbs-Up
In the mountainous region of Yunnan, while night-hiking as usual, he suddenly noticed four men in trench coats by the roadside who said to him, "Hey buddy, how much merchandise are you carrying? Just hand over a little."
Zheng realized they must have thought he was a drug dealer. Just as he hesitated, reaching for something in his bag, one man pinned him down—four gun barrels were visible poking out from the men’s trench coat pockets—four submachine guns.
Zheng laughed and said, "I’m hiking across China," then pulled out his stamp-covered postcards and a five-starred red flag to show them. The men carefully inspected the travel diary and other items in his backpack, then burst out laughing too. They gave him a thumbs-up. "Buddy, well done. If we were in the city, we’d invite you out for a meal."