1. Try to sneak out of your residential compound with a huge backpack and tent at dawn or late at night to avoid your colleagues’ monkey-like curiosity and your boss’s confusion over why you’re carrying so many strange items while supposedly bedridden. Of course, you’ll need to explain to the security guard that the stuff inside isn’t someone else’s.
2. When taking a taxi, be sure to frown and stare out the window, doing your best to look miserable. The driver, seeing all your bags, will assume your girlfriend kicked you out and won’t bother you with too many questions. Sometimes, if you’re lucky enough to get a softie, they might even give you a discount on the fare.
3. When you show up late again, yawning and 20 minutes behind schedule, facing the glares of everyone on the bus, I suggest the only thing you can do is find a way to make your hand bleed and tell them a story about fighting four fierce dogs at great personal cost for the sake of your travel dreams—this will earn you their full sympathy. So, carrying red ink is essential. Of course, during the trip, don’t attempt any high-difficulty moves like waving sticks or grabbing meat with your presumably injured hand. If you do, be sure to act extremely pained right away—squat down immediately, and make sure you’re not squatting next to a female companion in a skirt.
4. If there’s a beautiful woman in the group, stay cool and composed. You must resist the urge to crawl on your knees across a cliff and instead casually leap over it. Of course, don’t let the rope tied around your waist show. Avoid talking directly to the beauty; instead, strike up a conversation with a same-gender newbie next to her, chatting cheerfully to project an air of total control. Hmm… you must catch a newbie who accidentally drops something and lecture them, reciting all the environmental knowledge you know before they can defend themselves. If they never drop anything, try to create an opportunity for them to do so. If all else fails, stick your chewed gum on their collar and wait. But if they drop money, don’t say a word.
5. When you encounter an unreasonable dog, don’t panic. First, check if you have any food to bribe it with. If you do, use food to reason with it. If not, use your legs—running fast isn’t necessary, just outrun one of your companions so you can take a break.
6. Don’t let the urge to jump into a cool pool in your underwear overcome you when there are lots of people with cameras around. This will make you a lifelong laughingstock and leave evidence unless you’re craving fame through outrageous acts. The right approach is to bring your own camera and capture everyone else’s embarrassing moments. It’s even better if you’ve mastered skills like using photo-editing software to replace the background of your friend eating with a toilet or swapping their majestic mountain view with a girls’ dormitory—that way, you’ll have leverage to trade your own embarrassing photos. As for the pool? Can’t you jump in wearing someone else’s pants?
7. Normally, try to get as tanned as possible and learn local dialects. Ask the first local villager you meet about the neighborhood gossip so you can confidently explain to the ticket collector that you’re the first college student from your village to get into Beijing, here to give back to your hometown.
8. When setting up your tent the night before, be sure to choose your spot carefully—don’t pitch it right across from a public toilet. Otherwise, when someone throws money into your tent the next morning, you might not have change to give back. Try to use the time when everyone is setting up or packing up tents to answer nature’s call, reducing unnecessary physical effort and saving time.
9. When you find a water source, go the extra mile to wash and drink upstream from your companions to gain that self-satisfied psychological edge like Ah Q. When you can’t sleep at night, the smugness of others drinking your bathwater might just help you smile yourself to sleep.
10. If you lied to your mom to go out and couldn’t resist buying a bunch of mountain goods, the best way to cover it up is to buy a bag of bayberries from Dennis and then stuff the mountain goods into the Dennis plastic bag while chewing on the bayberries. When you get home, claim double the price and ask your mom to reimburse you.