Intrepid traveler refuses to let disease hinder inspirational journey

Liu Wenyan considers herself lucky. Despite being confined to a wheelchair most of the time, she has recently finished a road trip covering more than 15,000 kilometers.

The trip from her home city of Shangqiu in Central China's Henan province to Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and back again took 31 days.

Liu, aged 52, suffers from a neurodegenerative disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. But the condition did not stop her enjoying the journey with her son Zhao Tianci, taking in various scenery along the way, sipping tea on the prairie and enjoying local delicacies.

"It's a tiring journey, but my mom is all smiles," says 29-year-old Zhao, who acted as driver and videographer. "She would tell me that she is fortunate and happy, and her life is no worse than anyone else's, even though she is paralyzed."

Zhao captured their heartwarming journey in a series of videos and posted them on the popular Chinese short-video platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. The videos went viral, and soon Zhao and Liu were inundated with words of encouragement from followers across China, many making offers of help and hospitality.

A native of Henan, Liu once enjoyed a busy life, running a business and enjoying pastimes such as traveling, doing yoga and just sipping tea. Then she realized that something was wrong with her.

"It was one night in 2014. As my mother was making dumplings, her two fingers suddenly felt powerless," recalls Zhao. "We thought she was just tired. To relieve her discomfort, she rested for a while and we took her for a massage, which didn't help."

From that point, Liu's health deteriorated, the powerlessness gradually overtaking her two hands and later her arms. Half a year later, she found that the mounting symptoms had become impossible to endure, forcing her to travel further afield in search of a diagnosis.

In the latter half of 2015, in a Beijing hospital, she was diagnosed with ALS. ALS patients would progressively lose muscle strength, eventually becoming paralyzed and unable to speak, move, swallow or breathe.

"After my mother was diagnosed, she cried a lot," says Zhao. "We racked our brains to find ways of comforting her, persuading her to be positive so that she could overcome the disease and hold onto the day when a miracle might occur. But it was in vain."

Gradually, she gave up on her hobbies. She even locked herself up and refused to meet her friends for fear of putting them to any trouble, as she was unable to finish eating a meal independently.

Luckily, some months later, things began to take a favorable turn. Zhao took his mother to a scenic spot for the first time since her diagnosis, and they found that her mood became noticeably more positive.

He began to think about activities and trips that he could facilitate for his mother, offering some reprieve from her suffering.

"Over the years, during my work breaks or on weekends, we would travel with her, first in Henan and then outside the province," he says. "We also took her to watch new movies, taste new foods and play in amusement parks, to provide a distraction and make her feel the wonder of life."

In June this year, Zhao decided it was time for a bigger journey. He would accompany his mother on a self-driving road trip to Xinjiang, providing weeks of sightseeing and new experiences.

In preparation, he resigned from the real-estate company where he had worked for four years. He refitted the car's passenger seat to accommodate his mother, and purchased medicines, daily necessities and a tea set, among other things.

On June 10, after teaming up with one of his friends and his mother's caregiver, they left Shangqiu and headed for northern Xinjiang.

Zhao says it was not an easy journey. As the sole driver, sometimes he spent up to 16 hours a day behind the wheel. After two to three hours of driving, he would pull off at a service station to help his mother relax her muscles.

Late into the night, he would edit the video clips his friend had captured and upload them to Douyin, so that his mother could watch them upon waking the next day. "My original intention in crafting the videos was to record the memories for her to look back on, even after the trip," Zhao says.

Joining them on their journey were some 10,000 followers from across China. "Enjoy the moment and I wish your mom good health," wrote one follower.

For Zhao, the kindness from his followers and the strangers they met in Xinjiang provided him with the encouragement needed to finish the trip.

"Many Xinjiang locals invited us to have dinner with them, but we declined for fear of putting them to any trouble. Wherever we went, as long as there were steps, there was always someone helping us lift my mother's wheelchair. When we checked into hotels, many managers helped us upgrade to the hotel's best room free of charge," he recalls.

On July 11, they arrived back in Shangqiu. Since then, Zhao has continued to share their daily lives with concerned followers and has livestreamed regularly.

Before long, their story surfaced on social media, arousing widespread respect and empathy among people online, especially other ALS sufferers and their relatives. Some of them would share with Zhao their stories of losing loved ones to the disease or ask him via private chat for tips on how to care for ALS patients.

The experience inspired Zhao to do more to help people facing such difficulties. He now wants to establish a WeChat group for the caregivers of ALS patients in Shangqiu, helping them to communicate with each other, and to provide tips on care issues.

Meanwhile, he has purchased new equipment for the family home, including a ventilator and an eye-tracking device to help him communicate with his mother. Such technology is increasingly important as his mother's disease has entered a late stage, with her functions of speech, swallowing and breathing being badly affected.

But Zhao and his mother have not lost the travel bug yet. Zhao plans to take his mother to either Yunnan province for some tea tasting, or to southern Xinjiang, health issues permitting.

"I may not be able to stop her disease, but at least I can stop her being afraid of it," he says.