There is a Chinese aphorism that says: “读万卷书，行万里路”, whose literal translation is “read 10,000 books and travel 10,000 miles.” So far the odomoeter of my Honda says 66,429, but I am no where near 10,000 books (a feat that I don’t even attempt to achieve). Still, some recent readings have inspired me to think more about the relationship of traveling and reading.
A voyage has well-defined benefits: expanding one’s horizon, bonding people together, boosting local economy etc. This never bothers me. What bothers me is: how to travel better? Should I read up on the destination’s history before going? Should I take pictures and record everything, or should I close my eyes, take a deep breath and “be in the moment?” These questions reflect an underlying desire to “get the most out of travelling”, an utilitarian, efficency-driven mindset. This is understandable, as traveling costs money and we all want the best experiences.
But now I see traveling as introducing a new strand of yarn into a carpet. The strand’s contribution to the overall carpet’s pattern is not obvious until a later stage of the knitting. Its full “usefulness” can only be savored with futher rumination, path-crossing, reflections and readings.
I just finished Bill Bryson’s book Lost Continent, an account of his road trip through America’s small towns. Here is the beginning of the book:
I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can’t wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.
I was immediately hooked. I was entertained by his opinion of Des Moines and finished the book in no time.
But suddenly I realized, had I not driven across the U.S. and spent three days in Des Moines, and had Bill Bryson come from an equally obscure town like Lincoln or Cheyenne, I would not have read on. I kept reading precisely because I had stayed in Des Moines.
In November 2020, with three presentation deadlines pecking my butt, I had to stop in Iowa in the midst of my cross-country drive to Utah. I chose Des Moines because, well, there were hardly any decent Airbnb listings elsewhere in the Iowa. I stayed in a bungalow near the River Drive Park, ate ramen and did schoolwork (this is also how I learned the new word Bungalow). In between my homeworks, I would get out of the Bungalow and go for a run along the Des Moines River.
It was freezing cold in Iowa, a reminder of my middle-school geography knowledge of what continental climate looks like. This, is also echoed in Bill Bryson’s writing:
At Deshler I stopped for coffee and was surprised at how cold it was. Where the weather is concerned, the Midwest has the worst of both worlds. In the winter the wind is razor sharp. It skims down from the Arctic and slices through you…
I still know nothing of Des Moines' history, that is, if there is any. But my short stay at Iowa’s capital later leads me to a fascinating read, through which I learned many more interesting places that I want to visit.
For example, Bryson went to the Mackinac Island in the middle of Michigan lake, where the whole island has banned cars. Can you imagine? In America, the motherland of drive-thrus, there exists a place where no car is allowed? Everyone has to get around in horse carriages and bikes.
I also found that Great Smoky Mountain National Park receives the highest number of visitors in the US, more than 12 million people per year, 4 times as many as the second place Yellowstone. I’ve heard of Yellowstone when I was 8 in China, but I only learned about Great Smoky just now (why is it the case?). Bill Bryson says the sky in Montana is quite different, and now I really want to go to Big Sky to check it out for myself. He mentioned Devil Tower, and now I feel obliged to visit it.
Similarly, I first heard about Wall Drug Store in South Dakota through the movie Nomadland and read about it again through Bryson. (Btw, isn’t it wonderful that a Chinese director, who lived in China till college, made an excellent film about American nomads, when most Americans are not even aware themselves?) Because I flipped through Wuthering Heights feverishly this summer, I can’t wait to Lancashire, England, to stroll around the bleak hills and feel the North British countryside myself.
When I was hiking in Mount Washington, the NH one, not the WA one, I passed by a hotel called Bretton Woods. As I am reading financial histories, “Bretton Woods” come up at least a dozen of times in the first two chapters. It’s only later that I learned this NH hotel held the Bretton Woods Conferences, which happened in July 1944, one of the most significant post-WWII events to re-establish world financial systems. International Monetary Fund (IMF) was found there, 730 delegates from 44 Allied countries were present.
More personally, my hiking trip in 2018 Summer through the Alps probably in the end led me to EPFL for my Master’s degree. After spending 8 days in the mountain huts, I returned to Geneva with three days left to kill. I decided to rent a bike and cycle around Lake Leman, which has a circumference of 100 miles (160km). For a good cyclist, this could be easily done in one day, so my three alloted days wouldn’t be a problem.
I was overconfident in my ability to cycle. After a mere 60km, my butt hurt so much that I couldn’t continue, so I found a hotel in Lausanne. Little did I know that Lausanne was so hilly and not at all friendly to bikes. On my way to the city, I passed by EPFL, saw the Rolex library, the Olympic museums etc. I enjoyed the cobble stones, the church, the petit museums, but I wouldn’t say I immediately fell in love with it.
Little did I know at that time, that I will be spending future three years in that beautiful city. And it’s only later when I was doing school researches, that I realized International Skating Union is in Lausanne as well.
The traces left by a trip manifest at different times and in unexpected ways. There is the satisfaction of crossing off a place from your bucket list and saying “finally here!”. There is also gratification of recalling, when you read about a town you’ve been to five years earlier, and realize how the jigsaw pieces fit nicely together. There is also the intangible, water-like effect of a city like Lausanne on your soul, and without even realizng it, you applied to its grad school, accepted the offer and booked a ticket to Switzerland.
And it’s for these reasons that I go to places.