Last night, I saw a well-known travel vlogger posted an update that he declared he had returned to China and will not update any videos about riding. I guess someone knows who I am talking about. Yes, he is Xu Yun, or “Xu Yun Liu”, a famous riding vlogger. I knew Xu Yun from a hot China website-Bilibili about 2 years ago. In the beginning, Xu was not famous as nowadays. He just recorded his daily riding, and cooking, and showed the sceneries that happened on his road, sometimes he shared his thoughts on life. I have to say, his videos looked simple or plain, but they had a magic power and attracted many audiences including me.
Xu was an ordinary young man with a common family background and experience before he started his trip, he did not get a good diploma or a well-paying job offer. He was puzzled about his future and life. Maybe he was inspired by some thoughts or influenced by someone, he decided to start a long-riding trip to find the meaning of life. This was an unusual decision in China, as it is widely believed that a man should work on a stable career and get married after graduation. People commonly think a long trip is not the right thing for an adult and one can do this only when he/she is retired.
In recent years, more and more Chinese start accepting new ideas including that above, especially when people find that some vloggers can make a fortune just with some short videos, while those ones used to be supposed to be a group of chair warmers. According to this phenomenon, we can draw a conclusion, at least a part of the Chinese are realists and they care about realistic benefits rather than some ideal purposes.
After serval months of trips, Xu’s videos became popular and he got one of the top riding vloggers on the Chinese Internet, he got millions of fans on video websites. As a result, he earned much money from his videos and some firms wanted him to advertise for their products. Actually, I hardly found any obvious ad in Xu’s over 300 vlogs, except for some special short videos. In China, it was called “不忘初心”, which means a man did not forget his original beliefs after he became successful. This is an important reason why fans like Xu. Moreover, Xu is always polite, humble, knowledgeable, and neat. He always clean up every place he lived in and never leave any trash, even if those places are dirty before.
Xu took about 2 years to travel around China. He had been to many places, for instance, Tibet, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Northeast. This Summer, Xu made a decision that he would go abroad. He told the audience that he wants to see the aurora in Iceland and that he will ride his cycle to North Europe. To be honest, I look forward to his new journey to Iceland since I like polar lights very much, and seeing them is my dream.
Unfortunately, last night, Xu said he had finished his tour and he will never post riding vlogs in the future after one and a half months trip. And finally, he arrived in Mid-Asia. What a pity! I feel pitiful for his decision because he can not have an opportunity like this time. However, I can understand his decision for there are many difficulties with his travel. Most of the time, the vlogger showed how beautiful the scenery is and how wonderful his journey is, but the more you travel out, the more you feel lonely and alone. Besides, updating videos became a task for him, as so many fans urge Xu to vlog posting. He must be very tired(mentally) I guess.
Anyway, Xu is an excellent vlogger and I support his decision. At the same time, I think of the story of Forrest Gump. In the beginning, Gump started a long run but for no reason. Some people saw Gump as a freak. Gump ran through prairies, forests, farms, and the sea, and he also ran through spring, summer, autumn, and winter. His footprints are across the whole country. While after Forrest had been to many places, with many news reports of Gump, he became a celebrity and there were more and more people touched by Gump and joined Gump’s running team. People speculated about his motives for running. Someone said he running for fame and someone believed his purpose is environmental protection. Nobody believes Gump running for no reason. However, one day, Gump suddenly stopped in front of the people of his running team and decided to return to his hometown. I think Xu’s some part of experience looks like that of Gump’s, thus I believe Xu Yun realized that his life has to make a change so he was desperate to go home.