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Have horse, will travel - from Russia to China

By He Na (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-17 07:34

At first glance, he looked like a movie extra who had wandered away from the set of a period production.

Sitting astride a horse with his hair worn long, clad in a dark green cloak and a mud-stained pair of riding boots, the weather-beaten man was so out of place in a Beijing street that people were doing a double take - and looking for the cameras.

Chinese-Russian Li Jing rides at the foot of the Badaling section of the Great Wall over the weekend at the inivtation of members of a horse club in Beijing. [Zhou Guoqiang/China Daily] more photos

He is, in fact, a lonely adventurer keen on horse travel: The 47-year-old Chinese-Russian has trudged nearly 9,000 km in a year and a half from Eurasia to Beijing.

Fatigue still writ large on his face, Li Jing recalled his extraordinary journey. The modern-day Don Quixote set off from Votkinsk, the hometown of famous Russian composer Tchaikovsky, in August 2007. After passing 10 Russia cities and what seemed like endless countryside in 12 months, he arrived at the Sino-Russian border last August.

Entering the country at Manzhouli in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, he traversed through Daqing, Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, Qinhuangdao, Tangshan, and finally reached Beijing on March 8.

"I've been in love with horses and nature from the time I was small; and always dreamed of riding horses and traveling long distances," said Li, who graduated in library science from Wuhan University, and later worked at Shenzhen University's library.

His hometown, Wuhan, was the country's horse racing center in the early 1900s; and racing made a limited comeback earlier this year for the first time in 60 years.

At his university job, Li voraciously read travel journals and the idea for his odyssey started to take seed.

His life totally changed after he met a Russian scholar - also a keen horse rider. Li was so inspired by him he moved to Russia in 1990, where he has since worked as a part-time interpreter and Chinese language tutor. He married a Russian nurse and the couple, who now live in Moscow, have a 9-year-old son.

His latest journey has its roots in an aborted attempt three years after he went to Russia. He and a Russian friend planned a global expedition but the latter did not turn up on the day they were to set out - and Li reluctantly had to give up his plan.

Life was not easy in Russia, but his dream never faded.

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