From the issue Oct 17, 2002

Time Traveler: China Mountain High Young Chinese travelers, reports Crystyl Mo, are getting adventurous

CHIEN-MIN CHUNG FOR TIME Mountain bikers roll through Huguo Lu, Dali's backpacker central

Rock climbing instructor Li Weifeng met his would-be girlfriend during a harrowing descent down a steep cliff, near Ningbo in Zhejiang province. He has the scars to prove it. Sitting in a Shanghai café, Li pulls up his T shirt to reveal a wiry frame and two jagged, white furrows across his back. "Two girls on this particular trip had never climbed before," Li explains, "and I had to carry them, one at a time, down a sheer 20-meter cliff while hanging from a rope. My climbing harness bit into my back so sharply that it ripped deep into the skin." The heroics paid dividends. One of the girls was smitten. "If you can carry me down that cliff, I think you can support me for the rest of my life," she had told Li. They are now a couple.

Discovery, adrenaline, maybe even a little romance, are the active ingredients of adventure travel. Not everyone is lucky enough to find all three when exploring China's wilder places, but like Li, many mainland Chinese are becoming passionate in their quest-and after all, nailing two out of three ain't bad. With little appetite for canned travel-agency, tour-group outings, the country's first generation of white-collar workers has the time and the money to explore China's remote and exotic destinations. In increasing numbers, they are strapping on backpacks and climbing gear and heading for the mountains, and when they aren't actually cultivating blisters, they are gathering together on the Internet and in person to share their experiences. A few have even given up their jobs in dedicated pursuit of the elusive natural high.

Typical of these new trekkers is Chen Ziniu, a soft-spoken graphics designer from Guangzhou in Guangdong province. In February, Chen quit a $600-a-month job and went wandering, with no set itinerary and no return ticket. "I just wanted to go somewhere I'd never been before," says Chen, 31. "But gradually as I went along, travel became a sort of lifestyle as I came to understand the natural world." He explored four provinces, including mountainous western Yunnan, where a missed ferry at a remote river landing and heavy weather left him shivering through nights in freezing caves. Six days into a hike from Yunnan to the highlands of Tibet, his path was cut off by an avalanche at 5,000 meters above sea level. He was forced to turn around and trek six days back to civilization, camping out in the snow each night. "I feel that all people should have a period of roaming and exploring in their lives," says Chen, who is still on the trail after eight months.

Mainlanders are subjecting themselves to the rigors of adventure travel because (to paraphrase Sir Edmund Hillary) they can. "Other than the economics, there are several factors pushing this trend," says veteran backpacker Zhang Mei, founder of Beijing-based travel company WildChina. "Young people's awareness of individuality has become much more acute, particularly for the generation that grew up in one-child families." Freed from grinding poverty and from communism's social engineering, they are able to seek personal development through travel. "It's not about becoming a Party member anymore," says Zhang, adding that the country's more open media expose citizens to the pop culture of the West, where the backpacking ethos is entrenched. "There's an international influence on lifestyle," she says.

Discovery-whether of self or of the world-is a solitary pursuit for some. "My personality is such that I don't like to be controlled," says Si Meijuan, 27, a Beijing woman who has hiked alone in some of China's most remote and pristine regions. "I quit my job to travel because I did not want my journey to be restrained in any way." For others, travel can be about socializing and meeting like-minded souls. Dozens of outdoor clubs and travel websites have sprung up across China over the past few years. The clubs offer weekend hiking trips to nearby scenic spots, and two or three longer journeys throughout the year. Most clubs are nonprofit organizations whose founders got hooked on the outdoors a decade ago. The clubs advertise on the Internet, which has become a meeting point for travelers all over China to swap tips, share stories, make friends and inspire others to strike out on their own.

Gu Ming is one of the pioneers of this scene. He runs his Homeward Outdoor Club from a ramshackle office outside Shanghai's Hongkou soccer stadium. The walls are covered with photographs from recent trips of colorful tents pitched in green meadows and summiting climbers with exhausted smiles. The shelves are haphazardly stacked with expensive gear: sleeping bags, frame backpacks and Gore-Tex jackets. Gu, an enthusiastic talker with long hair-de rigueur for male backpackers, who often also sport an earring or two-spends much of his time studying travel books and magazines. Otherwise, he's poring over maps of Sichuan province's Siguniang (Four Girls), his favorite range of rugged snowcapped peaks. "People have the initiative to do these kind of trips because the city has too much pressure," he says. "You have to watch what you say, how you look. Out in the wilderness you can be dirty, you can relax, you can feel free."

One particularly well-thumbed collection of books at Homeward Outdoor Club is the Chiru series of adventure travel guides. Chiru publisher Zhang Jin, a 28-year-old graduate of Shanghai's Elite Fudan University and an active environmentalist, says she created the series because she figured China was ready for its own version of the popular Lonely Planet guidebooks. In less than a year-and-a-half, Zhang's books have become the bible for Chinese trekkers. About 700,000 copies have been sold; nearly every hiker on the trail carries a dog-eared version. Zhang, a self-described tomboy and compulsive adventurer, thinks she can sell plenty more. "Travel has become a way for young people to develop their social lives," she says. "It starts through a virtual online community, and eventually these people get to know one another in reality. It becomes a part of their lives."

When China's travelers are on the road, virtual hangouts give way to real ones that coalesce and dissolve at popular waypoints. For trekkers, the destinations of choice lie in China's western provinces-from the storied Silk Road in the highlands of Xinjiang to the rock climber's paradise of Yangshuo in Guangxi. The experienced tackle the challenging peaks of Xinjiang and western Sichuan, while groundlings go in search of minority culture in Sichuan and Yunnan. Lao Xie is proprietor of one of Yunnan's most popular rest stops, the international youth hostel in Lijiang. Lao, a veteran trailblazer who first set out with a denim rucksack in the 1980s, insists that "real backpackers travel alone." But he admits they also enjoy the company of kindred spirits when they're not breaking trail. On a recent Sunday evening, Lao was strumming a guitar in the dimly lit dining room of his hostel, surrounded by a circle of swaying, crooning, would-be mountaineers.

A certain amount of peril attends this rush of newbies into China's backcountry. The recent deaths of five Peking University students-members of a climbing club-while attempting to scale the 8,000-meter Mount Shishapangma in Tibet has drawn national attention to the hazards of the sport. "These kinds of activities are expensive," says Li, the climbing instructor, "and there is a lot of equipment, training and preparation. It is not for amateurs." Li climbed Mount Shishapangma himself two years ago. He knew three of the students who died. "Some of the new climbers don't see the danger of it," he says. "They see it as entertainment." James Kell, an Australian who runs popular rock-climbing outfitters ChinaClimb in Yangshuo, laments the lack of experience among many of his clients. "With the exception of a few experts, the rest of them are just cowboys," he says. "We rescued one guy who was bolting a route with no helmet and had fallen." Kell expects the situation to get better over time. "Yangshuo is going to be overrun with rock climbers in the next few years," he says. "Inevitably safety standards will improve."

Of course, risk is part of the rush. But not all of the dangers in adventure travel are so obvious. Some hikers and travel clubs express concern about the erosion of minority cultures because of rampant tourism. Just 10 years ago, the 15 ethnic groups of Yunnan rarely saw visitors. But the attractions of the remote region-red clay earth, bright green terraced rice paddies and a piercingly blue sky-have been a magnet for backpackers, foreign and domestic. So has the UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site of Lijiang, a charming town of wooden houses, winding canals and cobbled streets, which today harbors dozens of hostels, funky bars, restaurants and handicrafts shops catering to tourist hordes.

Most tribesmen aren't worried about losing their identity. They're grateful for the visitors and the money they bring. Yang Jianjun, a member of the Bai minority from the small town of Dali in Yunnan, drove a cargo truck for seven years but when a new railroad line undercut the trucking business, he lost his job and bought a taxicab. He says if it weren't for tourists, he would have to go back to farming rice paddies with his parents. At any rate, backpackers will keep coming, and those natives who don't welcome change are at least resigned to its inevitability. Says Gu of Homeward Outdoor Club: "The best way for us to get along with locals is to take care of the environment and learn to take care of ourselves."

Chen Ziniu, the designer, is now hiking in China's Three Gorges region. He's not quite ready to give up his wandering. "When you've completed a trip on a strange, new trail," he says, "a trip of which every aspect has been arranged by your efforts alone, you feel a great sense of achievement." And when will he return home? "I'll go back to look for a new job by October," he says. "Or maybe November." It's hard to hang up on the call of the wild.