At thirty, I “sang” my way into quitting my job.
An old motorcycle, a battered first-aid kit, and a Bluetooth speaker hanging from the handlebars. Wherever I went, I sang, and I sang so badly that the birds fled the mountains.
I thought this trip would be a journey around China, a chance to heal my soul.
Then, on the third evening, I found a man lying in the foggy mountain road, covered in blood.
He gripped my hand and left me with just one sentence:
“Don’t let them… take the thing across the border.”
And a “roadbook” hidden in the medical kit, filled with coded messages.
For the sake of a complete stranger, I, a hapless nobody who should have been lying flat and enjoying the scenery, was dragged into a web stretching across half of China: border smuggling, illegal digs in no-man’s-land, gunshots on the snowy plains…
They called themselves “Ferrymen.”
And my brother, who had been missing for years, seemed to be caught up in this web too.
“Don’t be afraid, brother. I’m coming to take you home.”
Along the way, I raced cars, got into fights, ran out of food in the wilderness, and nearly failed to make it down from a snowy mountain.
All for the sake of a promise, I rode thousands of miles.
The wilderness may be vast, but no one should ever be left behind.
