When Christophe Peres appeared at a press conference in Beijing in June, he aroused excitement among the people present. The Frenchman, with a sun-tanned face and thick stubby moustache while cycling 11,266 kilometers across China last year, was now clean-shaven and neatly-dressed, like a businessman promoting his product.
The product was his recently published book on his cross-country venture.
He is indeed a businessman. Before he came to China in 1999, he worked in Japan for 10 years where he was the representative director of one of the leading international marketing and design agencies.
For him, business and adventures are two different identities which, combined together, make his life complete.
Last year, the Frenchman traveled around 16 of China's provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in just five months.
If that is not impressive enough, then his idea of "selling" each kilometer as he traveled might be more thought-provoking.
With the co-operation of the Shanghai Children's Medical Center, his plan was to raise money from enterprises at a price of 1,000 yuan (US$120) per kilometer. For individuals, the price was sharply lower at 100 yuan (US$12). Each business or individual could decide how many kilometers they wanted to sponsor.
The money collected was used to provide treatment for Chinese children suffering from congenital heart disease.
Being a marketing veteran, Peres even set up a brand name for his fund-raising trip.
He called it "Yangqi Project," after his two sons, Mingyang and Mingqi.
The words have special meaning in Chinese. Yang represents sun, while qi means illumination and enlightenment.
Peres's book, which contains his journals on the long trip, has a sensational Chinese title - "Luo Ben (Streaking)."
Turn of life
Over the last 10 years, Peres has taken part in a large number of trekking and mountaineering expeditions in Nepal, Viet Nam, Papua New Guinea, Japan, as well as in his motherland France.
For him, the word "streaking" has many more connotations than its literal meaning of "running naked." It means ripping off the outer layer of the heart, to restore oneself to the original state of a new-born baby.
This idea sprouted in a mountaineering expedition of Mount Qomolangma (Mount Everest) in 1996.
It is a time that Peres will never forget. Every day he and his companions walked for eight to 10 hours. Although extremely tired, he felt at peace and was comfortable, and he realized that as well as being a successful businessman, he was also a friendly and generous human being.
"It was such a dramatic change between who I was in Japan, aggressive, engaging in business every day, and this person who I was on the trip," said Peres.
Peres liked both, but he also felt the need to be better balanced.
In 1997, Peres decided it was time to change his life. But it took him more than a year before he could finally leave his business in Japan.
Peres said it was the most difficult decision he had to make in his life, because he had worked so hard for his business, which was very successful then, for 10 years.
"It was like the river of money was coming, and then I decided I wanted to do something else. So it was a very difficult decision," he said.
However, being confident that he would have the power to do the same again, he left his business and traveled to China to seek a new way of life.
In the summer of 1998, Peres married a businesswoman from Shanghai.
Last May, Peres began his around-China venture after he finished a 12-month Chinese language course at the Beijing Foreign Studies University where he improved his Chinese.
The 36-year-old cyclist set off to Kashgar in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
During the following five months, he biked across Tibet, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, Tianjin, and finally arrived in Beijing in October.
Riding in the desert in Xinjiang and Tibet, Peres felt a little lonely, because there were no trees and no greenery. But the journey turned out to be fantastic as he met a lot of people with whom he shared many things, from food to experiences.
When Peres talks about the journey, he is like a passionate poet.
Unlike ordinary tourists gathering in famous tourism spots, Peres likes to explore the beautiful country in his own way.
"You can smell, you can feel the heat, the wind, the cold, you can stop everywhere to talk to the people, you can see their homes, you can see what they do. It was a very good tour, not to go and see, but to go and experience the real China," said Peres.
Every time he stopped near a village, he sat together with local villagers around the fire. They drank local alcohol and ate self-made yogurt.
In Tibet, when local people gave him a big bowl of yogurt, Peres put the grapes and nuts he brought from Xinjiang inside it. The local people were surprised because they had never thought of that, and they tasted it and liked it very much.
In Guizhou, he stopped and swam in a lake with local children for a couple of hours.
For him, these small moments were precious memories that he would cherish forever.
Born in Tahiti, a Pacific island, Peres said he liked to stay with people in the countryside, whom he deemed as more friendly and generous.
"All along the way I met people who gave me food or who wanted to drink with me, smoke with me," said Peres.
One day in Tibet he met a local woman who had a small house. It was very cold, so she invited the visitor for tea and food. She even offered her bed to him, allowing him to rest for however long he wanted.
In exchange with her generosity, Peres also showed pictures of his family to local residents.
Peres distinguished himself from others who have conducted bicycle rides like he has done.
"Many are trying to escape from something. For me that is not the case, because I have already been very successful," he said.
Charity project
Another difference is that Peres has completed tours for charity.
While at first his journeys were motivated by Peres' desire to find adventure, soon enough the "Yangqi Project" became much more fruitful.
So far 21 children with heart diseases have benefited from the money collected by generous donators.
Nearly 300,000 yuan (US$36,000) has been collected on the Chinese mainland, another 1 million yuan (US$120,000) in Hong Kong.
Profits from his book and a documentary recording the adventure will also be donated. In total, it is expected that nearly 2 million yuan (US$240,000) will be raised.
Now that the result has been seen, the idea of "Yangqi Project" can easily be understood.
But one and a half year ago when Peres tried to persuade people to join him, many thought he was crazy.
"Besides being a charity project, this is also a marketing project. But my Chinese friends did not believe that I could raise money and build so many things just out of a concept because they did not understand the mechanism behind it," said Peres who has much experience in marketing.
Peres said he felt lonely when he was trying to persuade people in Beijing and Shanghai to join him.
"Most of my Chinese friends, I guess, thought I was asking them for help. But actually I was not. I wanted to share this adventure with my friends. I was telling them this was going to be a fantastic project, you cannot imagine how big it will become," said Peres.
However, things changed in Guangzhou and Shenzhen of South China's Guangdong Province, when people became more familiar with the idea, and many people began to support him.
In the future, Peres, who claims that he is "far-sighted," plans to build "Yangqi" into a household charity brand, - a brand of the Chinese people. He will use the brand to collect help from those who are strong enough to help others, to give to those who need help.
The adventure is also fruitful to Peres himself. He said the trip, all those things and people he met on the way, made him learn two things.
One was that he is not so important as he thought.
Two, he has learned to dream, which he also deems as very important.
"We create our own limitations. We are afraid of failure. Now I am not afraid of failure," Peres said. "Before I left the business life, I left very small parts of my life to dreams. Now I want to do the opposite - I want my life to be led by dreams."
(China Daily June 17, 2002)
