Laid Off at 35, I Took My Family on a Road Trip in an RV

At 35, Lu Yao was laid off by an internet company. Mortgage payments, supporting his family, and repeated failures at job interviews had reduced his life in Shenzhen to a list of figures on a calculator. At three in the morning, a strange notification appeared: “Camper System binding in progress. Initial vehicle: budget manual camper van. Daily target: 100 kilometers. Each additional kilometer: 5 yuan. Fall short, and the same amount will be deducted.”

This is a real Chinese national highway loop: G228, the most beautiful coastline; G331, king of the northern frontier roads; and G219, the world’s highest-altitude national highway. But what the mileage truly measures is not twenty thousand kilometers of road, but the distance one person travels from “rushing to get somewhere” to “being on the road,” the growth of a family from four people to six, and a promise twelve years in the waiting, finally fulfilled: “Let’s not wait for someday. Let’s do it now.”