A 49-Year-Old Chinese Woman's Round-the-World Tour

By staff reporter LI YAHONG

    I couldn't stop traveling once I started. Wherever I went, I had completely different feelings as I experienced each place," says Ma Li. In 19 years, Ma has traveled through an astounding 125 countries and regions in a very economical way. She said she was the first Chinese woman to swim in the North Pole's freezing waters and visit the South Pole as a backpacker. With her fashionable curly hair, Ma looks energetic and always wears a warm smile. The English words and popular terms she throws into her conversation belie the fact that she only graduated from primary school.

At the South Pole.

"My Little Dream"

    Ma Li was born in the 1960s in a mountainous area in southwest China's Yunnan Province. Before starting her traveling life, she packed and nailed boxes in an import and export company for a few years. "I wanted to break the ties of fate," she explains. "I don't like restraints, and I am eager for people's attention." She swore to herself that she would leave her hometown.

    At the very beginning it was the pressure of life that aroused Ma's fancy for going to strange places. Ma had experienced a short and unhappy marriage. She writes in her book: "My desire for traveling became even stronger, probably because I wished to escape from reality and pursue my little dream." In 1989, Ma quit her job. She went to Hungary and did temporary work there. Ma hoped that she could get a better job overseas. "I wanted to earn more money and change my tedious life," she explains. She seems very happy recalling her first trip nearly two decades ago.

    With only US $50 and her ID in a small bag, Ma went to Hungary, where she made a living by doing temporary work or vending on the street. "I imported jeans and shorts from Poland's border area and earned some money by selling them." In addition, Ma worked as a nanny, a postwoman and telephone operator. At the same time, she also tried to work in neighboring countries. In 1992, she left Hungary for Australia. "At that time I started to feel the pleasure of traveling and I got the idea of taking a world tour."

    Over the next few years Ma traveled extensively, living in tents and eating cheap, simple meals. Every time she ran out of money she took on temporary jobs. She is good at Chinese cooking and so covered her traveling costs by utilizing her culinary expertise. "Wherever I stopped, I would find a job as a chef in small restaurants, which brought me a relatively good income." After saving enough money, she went on traveling. In this way, she left her footprints all over the world. She has been to the North and South Poles, and almost everywhere in between, including tropical rainforests along the Amazon River, the Himalayas, Soweto in South Africa, and the remote, sparsely populated Saint-Pierre Island. She has visited the Middle East where temperatures can reach 40 degrees centigrade, and glaciers in Argentina where the temperature was minus 40 degrees centigrade.