The protagonist of this story is Yang Houwan,who had previously promised to take his mother out for a walk and hadn't been able to fulfill it, but this time he was inspired by others and decided to take her back to her hometown on foot.
This is the first time that 84-year-old Liu Shizhi has gone out of town. She has lived in the mountains all her life, and when she talks about her son and daughter-in-law taking her on a long-distance trip, she always reveals all of her dentures, and can't stop smiling happily, "I'm happy, I'm so happy."
Yang Houwan said, "Mother is a person who loves to walk around and play." But after his father died more than a decade ago, his mother has been depressed, in order to coax his mother to be happy, he promised to take her out for a walk. But Yang Houwan's family is a native farmer, the family relies on him to work in the coal plant to earn money, the economy is not generous, there are children to raise, so the plan has been put on hold again and again.
Looking at his aging mother, Yang Houwan felt that he could not wait any longer, and a few years ago, he saved money while providing for his family.
"At first, I was prepared to take the form of a bus." But last year, Yang Houwan learned of the story of a couple from his hometown of Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, hiking back to his hometown in Kaizhou District, he was y inspired, "two couples hiking is quite good, but there is a point, if you take your mom and dad together would be perfect." So he began planning his hike with his mother.
In the beginning, this plan was not known to his wife, Yan Xuechui, Yang Houwan thought of taking care of his mother's food and drink along the way, and he carefully asked his wife for her opinion, "I didn't expect her to be very supportive of me, and said, 'Then I'll go with you!'"
Expanded
Pulling his mother to feel the scenery
With his wife's support, and just as the family didn't have any crops, and the children were in the city to school to take care of someone, they were ready to go. Their hiking program began last October when they took their mother on a return trip to visit relatives in the town of Yangjian, Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
Yang Houwan first used thickened stainless steel to make a two-meter-long, one-meter-wide human-powered cart in Jiangsu province, which has a sedan chair roof that he personally designed, with everything inside. "My mother loved it," and figuratively called it a "sedan".
In order to keep his mother warm, he equipped with an inflatable mattress and three quilts in the car, underneath the car, but also special space to put gas canisters, gas stoves, rice, bowls and so on. Plus three people's luggage, this original 200 pounds of pulling the car, hard to increase the weight to more than 500 pounds.
The daytime traveling, the night will find a hotel to stay. Along the way, the mother Liu Shizhi will sit peacefully in the car, son and daughter-in-law in front of the pull, encountered the beauty of the stop, happened to like the city, they will also stay a few days to play.
They set off from Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, on October 19, 2020, along the 318 National Highway all the way to the west, across Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei provinces, hiking more than 1,800 kilometers, with this manpower "limousine" pulling his mother from Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, to Xuancheng, Anhui Province, over Tianzhu Mountain in Anhui Province, the Dabie Mountains, the Yinshan Mountains in Hubei Province, and finally reached Huanggang, Hubei Province.
Yang Houwan said he was originally prepared to use the entire form of hiking, but to Yichang when the snow closed the mountains, taking into account the safety of the ship from Yichang to Chongqing Wanzhou. He roughly calculated that in a few months of travel, they stayed in more than 60 hotels, walked through the countryside, streets more than two hundred, "so that my mother felt the scenery she had not felt before her 80s, we also followed my mother to play Ge (Sichuan: enjoy the blessings), a lot of unseen, have seen."
BEIJING EVENING NEW VISION NETWORK - Across four provinces, walking a total of 2,000 kilometers! Chongqing couple hiking to take 84-year-old mother back home