The "World's No. 1 Long-Distance Hiker" passes through Gaobeidian City.
On the evening of June 27, carrying a backpack weighing over 20 kilograms, Zheng Jianwei—hailed as the "World's No. 1 Long-Distance Hiker"—passed through Gaobeidian City. It is understood that to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the death of national hero Zhao Shangzhi, Zheng set out from Liaoning on this trip with plans to hike a loop of 5,000 kilometers, using this method to promote red culture.
"I used to only know that Gaobeidian's dried tofu strips were delicious and famous, but today I’ve seen that Gaobeidian is a clean, beautiful, and economically developed city with very warm and friendly people!" said Zheng Jianwei. He added that next, he will continue hiking along National Highway 107 toward Baoding.
Zheng Jianwei, 58 years old, lives in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, and is originally from Luannan County, Tangshan City. He once worked at the Tiexi District Industrial and Commercial Bureau in Shenyang. In June 1999, after reading in the newspaper about American retired veteran David Kunst, who had hiked over 53,000 kilometers within a single country and set a Guinness World Record, Zheng applied for a leave of absence without pay and set out on July 1, 1999, from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, beginning his long "red-themed" hiking journey. Over the past 13 years, he has walked 180,000 kilometers across 33 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, visiting more than 2,700 counties and cities, averaging 50 kilometers of hiking per day, and setting the world record for the longest hiking journey.