Covering 12,000 kilometers by train or bus, and walking hundreds more, US expatriate Jeff Brown spent 44 days traveling rough through China's hinterlands, writes Mike Peters.
The average expatriate in China never thinks there is enough time to see the country properly. Many foreigners have two or three weeks of holiday, and if they want to go home once a year, that leaves no time to explore distant, rural locales far from the big cities where they work.
So at first glance, Jeff Brown's adventure last year, recently published in book form as 44 Days Backpacking in China, looks like a dream come true. But Brown's idea of a vacation may strike some as pretty hard work.
In that six-week stretch, the 50-something American from Oklahoma covered 12,000 kilometers by train or bus, and walked hundreds more. He knows that most foreigners, even those that live in China like himself, have their ideas about the mainland's opening up shaped by a Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou perspective. So he wanted to visit the hinterlands - provinces he'd never seen - to see how rapid changes in China have affected people there.
Brown is no stranger to foreign places: He traveled to Brazil as a graduate student "seeking his fortune" and then worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia. He learned Arabic and French in the next eight years (1982-1990), working in Africa and the Middle East, and then brought his French wife, Florence, to China for seven years, where they had two sons and he learned to speak Chinese. After stints in France and the United States, the Browns came back to China in 2010.
"I worked in corporate management and business ownership for 28 years, and teaching for seven," he says. "All of these iterations have brought me into contact with thousands of individuals from every walk of life: princes, paupers, politicos, populists, tin-pot tyrants, worldly saints and humble citizens - originals all," he says. "Most were just trying to survive and be happy."
Having summers off while he teaches at an international school provided the time for his trek last year that prompted him to write 44 Days. And while he deliberately chose to visit provinces he didn't see during his first years in China, it was people more than places that he sought out - eager to share their lives and experiences.
"That kind of travel is not for everybody," he says, laughing. "I traveled really rugged, on local trains and no taxis - even in places where there were taxis. I stayed in local hostels and ate in local restaurants that most foreigners wouldn't want to go to."
