Adventures on the Open Road

In the trunk, a faded camouflage uniform is still dusted with grit from the field training ground. A Zheng, a former captain of a PLA training unit, is fastening his son “Running Hero” into his car seat. Ever since the boy clenched his tiny fists and set foot on a highway at the age of two, the wheels of their journey have never stopped. Together, they are writing a different kind of coming-of-age story beneath the open sky.

At two, “Running Hero” stumbles after the sunset across the Gobi near Dunhuang, refusing to stop even with his little shoes full of sand. At three, on the Tea Horse Road, he rises on tiptoe to offer a porter half a bottle of water. The old porter smiles, pats his head, and slips some dried wild dates into his pocket. On a rainy day when he is four, A Zheng uses fieldcraft learned in training to put up a rain shelter, while his son secretly arranges the wild fruit he has gathered into a five-pointed star, saying, “It looks like the medals on Dad's uniform.”

The journey is never smooth. Beneath the snowy mountains of Tibet, they meet an old lama who guards a temple and listen to his stories of the stars. Beside a grassland marsh, A Zheng draws on his tactical experience to rescue a shepherd whose vehicle is stuck. “Running Hero” holds up a toy walkie-talkie and plays at directing the rescue. A Zheng teaches his son to read the stars and find his way, but his son teaches him something in return: don't keep your eyes fixed on the road ahead. The wildflowers by the roadside and the grass growing between the rocks are worth stopping to admire.

Beside a marker for their hundred-thousand-kilometer journey, “Running Hero” holds up a shell he picked up and asks his dad, “Can we go see the sea at our next stop?” Looking into his son's bright eyes, A Zheng suddenly understands: this road trip was never about escaping. It is about using a soldier's iron-strong shoulders to give his child a world where he can run free. Every adventure is a medal of fatherly love and courage, and every tire track marks a warm moment in a child's journey to adulthood.