Tired, Yuxi went to a village to ask for a drink of water.
To prove she wasn’t just a pretty face, Zhong Yuxi, a post-90s Huizhou girl who once couldn’t even hang up her own clothes, set off on a budget travel journey with a backpack weighing over 40 pounds. Over the course of three and a half months, she traveled through multiple provinces including Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Tibet, experiencing not only the hardships of roughing it—sleeping outdoors, mooching food, drinks, and rides—but also gaining an unforgettable birthday and hard-earned personal growth.
Yuxi wrote in her QQ blog: “The biggest difference between traveling and a trip is that traveling uses only your feet and eyes, while a trip also requires bringing your soul and dreams. See the world with your own eyes, taste it with your own taste buds, and feel it with your own skin. As far as your heart goes, that’s how far you can go.”
Work and life were too comfortable
She wanted to prove she wasn’t just a pretty face
During their meeting, Yuxi’s delicate voice over the phone made it hard to associate her with “budget travel.” During the interview, she always wore a gentle smile, as if she were telling someone else’s story. As the only child in her family, Yuxi was indeed a pampered child growing up.
Born in 1990, Yuxi had been working for six years, always in clerical jobs, with a comfortable family life and work environment. In her early twenties, before her budget trip, she had never washed or hung up her own clothes—her mother had done most of the housework.
In recent years, Yuxi had read many stories about cyclists and backpackers on online and travel information platforms, and the restless seed in her heart finally sprouted.
“Like many people, I thought about it for years but found it hard to take action,” Yuxi said. It wasn’t until last year, when she returned to her hometown in Hunan for the Chinese New Year and chatted with her best friend, Miss Zhao, that the idea of a budget trip struck them both. So she quit her job and started planning the trip with Miss Zhao.
In April of this year, Yuxi only told her mother she wanted to visit Hunan for fun, then set off alone for the first time with a huge backpack, taking a train to Hunan to meet Miss Zhao. “At the time, my friend counted on her fingers and said, ‘You’ll be back in three days’—a round-trip by train is exactly three days,” Yuxi told reporters. “At first, it was like I was acting out of spite—I just wanted to prove to the people around me that I wasn’t the so-called ‘pretty face’ I was joked about.”
Didn’t know how to pitch a tent while camping
Got scratched by thorny bushes
Back in her hometown in Hunan, Yuxi and her friends had no problems with food, lodging, or anything else. But when they reached their second stop, Guizhou, they first tried to borrow a temple to pitch a tent but were turned down; then they wanted to pitch a tent on an uninhabited mountain, but village kids told them drug addicts often appeared there and it wasn’t safe. In the end, they had to come down the mountain and pitch a tent in a farmhouse garden for the night.
Speaking of this, Yuxi couldn’t help but laugh. It turned out they had never pitched a tent before, and it was too dark that night to read the instructions, so they fumbled around and struggled for a long time before finally setting it up. Yuxi said, “We were so confused—why did we think tents were supposed to be arched with a curve, but ours came to a point? We just squeezed in and slept that way. The second time we pitched a tent, we read the instructions and realized the aluminum poles could be bent to open the tent.”
What touched Yuxi the most was the experience of getting trapped in the mountains with a group of fellow travelers on the way to Yubeng Village in Yunnan. “If you don’t have basic wilderness survival knowledge, in those mountains, you wouldn’t just risk being eaten by wild animals—you could freeze to death.”
Yuxi recalled that it was extremely cold in the mountains, and they had to figure out how to start a fire. To avoid starting a forest fire, they also had to find rocks to encircle the fire. But the thorny branches scratched her hands until they bled, and when she was looking for rocks, her pinky finger was smashed, a piece of her nail was torn off, and tears streamed down her face.
Often hitched rides to save money
Was also rejected before
Yuxi would write travel blogs online during her journey, which drew a lot of skepticism—wasn’t it too bold for such a young girl to travel like this? To this, Yuxi laughed and said, “Actually, there aren’t that many people in the world with the time to come out and harm you. As long as you behave properly and don’t offend others, and you stay alert, you’ll be fine. Anyway, most of the people I met along the way were good.”
Yuxi and Miss Zhao mostly traveled on foot and by hitchhiking, and they had their own ways of managing risks: when hitchhiking, they never got in a car that stopped for them; if a car stopped after they flagged it down and there were only men inside, they would ask for directions; if there were women or children, they would ask for a ride. Yuxi was rejected and even asked for money, but most people were willing to help. Even after getting in the car, they didn’t let their guard down and kept an eye on whether the car was heading in the right direction.
From Hunan to Tibet, Yuxi had Miss Zhao for company, so she had a companion. But after leaving Tibet, Miss Zhao had to go home due to family matters. That left Yuxi to continue the journey alone. Yuxi said, “When Miss Zhao first left, I even thought about ending the trip and going home, but I persevered and visited five more cities.”
Most expensive ticket: 90 yuan
But ended up being scammed by a kid
Right when Miss Zhao left, Yuxi experienced the only scam of her trip. She arrived in Dujiangyan, Sichuan, where the ticket cost 90 yuan—the most expensive ticket of her entire journey. But she believed budget travel wasn’t about saving money to travel, but about seeing the most places with the least money within her means. Just as Yuxi was about to spend 90 yuan on a ticket to Dujiangyan, two kids walked up and said they could help her get cheaper tickets. “They didn’t ask for money upfront. I watched them buy the tickets at the ticket window, so I believed them.” Yuxi took the cheaper ticket to the entrance, only to be told it was a discounted ticket for locals with ID cards.
Furious, Yuxi didn’t want to buy a ticket and go in anymore. On the way out, she began reflecting on herself—if she hadn’t been so tempted by small gains, how could she have been scammed? She realized she was also at fault and didn’t need to argue with kids. Later, she hitched a ride back to Dujiangyan, where she met Zhuoma, a college student from Chengdu. Yuxi shared her travel experiences with her, and the two hit it off. Afterward, Yuxi stayed at Zhuoma’s house for a week. A few days later, Yuxi wanted to go to another place to retrieve some luggage she had left behind.
Yuxi said, “But Zhuoma wouldn’t let me leave, afraid I’d go. She followed me everywhere, up and down, very reluctant to say goodbye.”
Travel freely without rigid plans
Evening brings unexpected encounter with a sea of flowers
After bidding farewell to Zhuoma, Yuxi continued her journey northward, passing through the provinces and cities of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Beijing, and Tianjin. Yuxi told reporters, "These routes were actually unplanned—I just went with the flow, and wherever I felt like going, I went. That’s what traveling is all about."
Yuxi said that during her northbound trip through some cities, there was one time when she walked the whole day without anyone willing to give her a ride, nor did she manage to catch a bus, so she had to walk all the way on foot. But along the way, she saw a vast field of sunflowers. "It was beautiful. I really wanted to jump in and play, but it was getting dark."
Yuxi said that the most important thing about traveling is to adjust your mindset in a timely manner. Because you will encounter all kinds of unpredictable problems, and you must actively deal with them to find solutions. "If I had kept dwelling on the fact that I didn’t catch the bus, and hadn’t realized that I gained a beautiful field of sunflowers, wouldn’t that be unfair?" Luck struck again—after walking past the sunflower fields, as it was getting close to nightfall, she spotted a set of train tracks.
Upon arriving in Beijing, Yuxi stayed at her relative’s home. After being persuaded by her relatives and coaxed by her mother through a mix of firmness and incentives, Yuxi, who was indeed feeling homesick, decided to end her trip early.
For her three-and-a-half-month journey, she only spent 3,000 yuan.
In the end, Yuxi declined her cousin’s offer to buy her a flight ticket home, and instead bought a hard-seat train ticket. She traveled for 36 hours back to Huizhou.