Li Dongju made headlines recently for her cross-continental biking adventures. Between misadventures with border guards in Bosnia, reporting a budding wildfire in Australia, and camping out in cemeteries, there’s enough peculiar adventure to fill any travel influencer’s Instagram or YouTube page.
But Li Dongju isn’t a content creator selling a lifestyle to millennials or Gen Z. She’s 66, has a scant social media presence, and gets by on a meager pension from her time in a textile factory.
A silver tourism sweetheart
Li Dongju is the apotheosis of “silver tourism,” a term describing the phenomenon of engaged, active senior travelers. For months every year, Li bikes the backroads, visiting towns on two wheels that most tourists never see on four.
It’s a far cry from her earlier assumptions about where her life would go. In 2000, like many others in China, Li fell victim to mass national layoffs and lost her job at a textile factory. She was left with a slim pension of $414 a month. Shortly after, her life shifted once again. A female colleague of her husband’s called her out of the blue and told her the two of them were having an affair.
The marriage went downhill rapidly.
“I will never forget how shocked I was when my husband asked for a divorce,” she told China Daily. “Despite how simple and dull our daily lives were, I never thought we would go through that kind of change.”
As soon as they separated, he remarried another woman.
Li spiraled into depression, exacerbated by bipolar disorder. She tried burying herself in video games and then in volunteer work. Nothing seemed to help, and she eventually wound up in a psychiatric ward.
Salvation through cycling
In 2013, amid rising concerns from her family about her mental state, a group of cyclists tore past Li on the street. The image grabbed her, but she couldn’t afford a bicycle on her pension.
Sensing something important in her sudden desire, her son gifted her a mountain bike. It would have cost more than two months of her pension, and Li was thrilled. She wanted to bike through the high-altitude vistas of Tibet and see the “roof of the world.”
But with only $23.50 in savings, that dream seemed far away. For a year, she worked as a house cleaner, saving her salary and biking around her hometown of Zhengzhou every day.
Then, in 2014, she set out on her first real venture: a trip to Vietnam with a group of other Chinese cyclists. Within a week, she accidentally became separated from her companions. She was lost and had knowledge of Vietnamese. Li eventually returned home, determined to get more practice in her own country before trying any more foreign trips.
She started by biking to 20 cities across China. This time, she took her poodle Xili with her. He rode in the basket as she biked from her native Zhengzhou to far-flung Hainan and Xinjiang. Life began to look up.
Li Dongju and her poodle Xili on their 2015 China tour. Photo: Li Dongju
A new way of living for Li
With some real road time under her belt, Li set off once more for Southeast Asia with two other cyclists. A month of poor weather and punctured tires left the other two dispirited. By the time they arrived in Nha Trang, Vietnam, they were ready to turn back.
Li was not. After the group split up, a Chinese teenager living in Nha Trang offered her a room to stay and then cycled alongside her for the next leg of her journey.
After another month, she was back in Zhengzhou. But she wouldn’t stay put for long. Her biggest venture came in 2019 when she set out across Europe armed with only her bike and Google Translate.
Then came Australia, where she alerted local authorities about a wildfire, and New Zealand.
And then, COVID-19.
When setting out for Europe, “I only knew four phrases. Thank you, sorry, no, okay.” Photo: New People
Disease and death
COVID halted Li’s travels as China initiated its zero-tolerance policy. Confined to her house, she began live-streaming and garnered significant media attention.
Her ex-husband came down with cerebral thrombosis. His wife left him. Li Dongju, who had “no hate” in her anymore after years of cycling, returned to Zhengzhou to remarry him and act as his caretaker. He was paralyzed and had no one else in his life but her.
To top it all off, her poodle died.
Back on the road
Li has recovered from the blows dealt to her during COVID and her ex-husband’s illness, and she’s ready to be cycling again.
She recently gave an interview on CNN in which she highlighted the kindness shown to her around the world. From the teenager in Nha Trang to trekkers in Australia who hugged her when she was covered in grease, the generosity of strangers has deeply inspired her.
“Every time I see her [photo], it brings tears to my eyes,” she told CNN, referring to a woman in Australia who offered her water and pomegranates on a brutally hot day.
Locals helped Li Dongju out on her trips, including this man who helped her when she was lost in the Australian outback. Photo: Li Dongju/CNN
Her next trip will pass through Kazakhstan and end in the United Arab Emirates. When Li sets out, she will do so with the eyes of the world on her.
Why Li Dongju?
The story above is the version that has made its way to the English-language press. Li Dongju cuts a different figure in China. In several Chinese-language stories about her, the scorned wife became a nagging harpy whose mental illness alienated those around her. A story of personal salvation became one of redemption as she relinquished her hatred of her husband and returned, penitent, to his bedside.
Part of the popularity of Li Dongju’s story stems from how effectively it travels across cultural boundaries. For Western media, steeped in American individualism and an obsession with physical fitness, she’s a strong-minded woman who forged a new, fulfilling life while working out in her old age.
For Chinese platforms, in a landscape dominated by family loyalty and respect for old age, she serves both as a redemption story and an inspiration to a rapidly aging population. (It’s worth noting that there was plenty of pushback on the Chinese internet to the narrative of Li as a prodigal wife, just not on high-profile outlets.)
Li Dongju with four cyclists she met in Australia. Photo: China Daily
But despite their differences, both of these narratives share an obsession with Li’s age. The word 奶奶 (grandmother) is ubiquitous across Chinese sources, a term that carries a level of fondness and respect not present in the English translation. In a culture that values old age, this focus makes sense.
English-language sources refer to her as a “Chinese grandma,” “gung-ho grandma,” and “Chinese grandmother.”
The implicit suggestion in English-language headlines is that traveling the world, particularly in a manner as grueling as cycling, is a pastime for the young or middle-aged. A 66-year-old woman setting out so proactively to enjoy life, these articles imply, is unusual.
The rise of ‘silver tourism’
Silver tourism is an economics term linked to the idea of active aging, which the World Health Organization somewhat stiffly defines as “the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation, and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age.”
For many seniors, participating in desired activities comes with limitations. Their mobility may be diminished. They may require easy access to healthcare providers, eliminating exotic, isolated locales. They may struggle to find travel information online.
In short, if tourism companies are to profit from this sector, the services they provide must differ from traditional models.
China has risen to meet the challenge. The government recently commissioned a host of new cross-country trains designed for the needs of senior citizens, with cushy berths, handrails, ready supplies of oxygen, and help staff on call. Part of the funding is allocated toward integrating the trains into local tourism services.
A tourist train in Chengdu features nicer amenities than the average. Photo: Liu Kun / Xinhua
Some Chinese B&Bs target the senior population, featuring slow-paced travel plans and in-house physiotherapy. Hotels are introducing quiet floors and safety measures for those with decreased mobility.
“Senior citizens prefer to use offline travel agents with whom they can communicate face to face,” Wang Yonggang, a professor of tourism, told Sixth Tone, an English-language online publication. “Travel agency chains with branches in residential areas are a great channel for older generations to access information.”
Shanghai even boasts the University for the Senior, whose offerings include tourism courses. Speaking to Sixth Tone, 64-year-old tourism student Ying Limin said, “As long as I am able to walk, I hope to seize the opportunity to explore as many foreign countries as I can before it’s too late.”
Ying Limin poses in Copenhagen. Photo: Ying Limin/Sixth Tone
What about the West?
Li Dongju does not fall into the marketing profile of the silver tourist. She uses the internet to find cycling companions, makes copious use of Google Translate, and is as self-reliant a traveler as one could hope for.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that her story has caught on in American news sources. After all, the budding support system for mobility-impaired senior tourists in China is alien to American infrastructure.
I recently found myself on an Amtrak train from Charlottesville, Virginia to Huntington, West Virginia. By car, it’s a drive of about four hours, or five hours if you drive like I do. On Amtrak, it took 10 hours. Two of those hours were spent on an incomprehensible stop in the middle of the Monongahela National Forest. We were already traveling at a speed any “gung-ho grandma” cyclist could beat when we slowly dwindled to a halt in a sea of kudzu and maples. No loudspeaker announcement elucidated the situation.
Ideally, the author would have viewed the lovely landscape of West Virginia out of a moving train rather than a stationary one. Photo: Reynier Squillace
The internet had been down the whole trip, despite Amtrak’s promises to the contrary, and the AC was paltry. This deep in the National Radio Quiet Zone, there was no cell service. I sat curled in my tiny seat with only a copy of Annapurna for companionship, feeling rather that Maurice Herzog had gotten off easy. At least he never had to experience the American train system.
For me, this baffling delay was an irritation. But for many senior travelers, Amtrak’s tendency to fail on its already meager promises represents a serious barrier to travel. It’s no wonder that cruises dominate American silver tourism. If you don’t want to drive, it’s easier to cross the ocean than to travel from one state to another.
In Europe, meanwhile, EU-funded companies such as Euromontana offer training courses in silver tourism. “The training is especially important for frontline service employees. They currently don’t have the knowledge and experience needed to interact with people living with certain health conditions,” tourism and health professor Jun Wen told Phys.org.
Still, silver tourism in Europe lags behind its Asian counterparts. “Asian consumers in the ‘silver’ age group are well-integrated into active social lives due to a culture that values longevity,” a recent article in the journal Population and Economics noted.
That, I think, is why Li Dongju inspires Western audiences as much as she does Chinese ones. Her success isn’t contingent on infrastructure only available in Asian markets. Anyone with the money for a mountain bike and decent physical fitness can aspire to become like her. Li offers a positive vision of aging in a Western culture that valorizes youth.
