A decade after setting out across South China Morning Post-covered coastal roads, Liu Peijin’s road trip across China has reached 31 of the country’s 33 provinces, with his partially paralysed wife beside him throughout.
Liu, 69, a former serviceman from Weifang in Shandong province who spent 18 years in the military, began the journey in 2014 alongside his wife, a woman he has known since primary school. Complications from diabetes had left her partially paralysed on her left side, confining her to a wheelchair and making the couple’s long-held dream of touring their native country seem impossible. Rather than accept that, the two agreed they ‘would rather die on the road than in a hospital bed’, and drove out of the gate.
From a Car to a Camper: How the Liu Peijin Road Trip China Took Shape
The journey did not start with much. The couple set off by car through coastal Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, carrying medical supplies and a plan to keep moving. Before long, Liu replaced the car with a camper van, which he fitted out himself: a kitchen, two beds, a dining table, and a stock of the medicines and equipment his wife requires daily.
Liu has, in effect, become his wife’s full-time nurse. He ensures she completes rehabilitation exercises, takes her medication on schedule, and has regular foot soaks to manage her diabetes. The routine has held across more than a decade of constant travel, through cities, rural areas, and remote landscapes that few tourists reach.
The results, by Liu’s own account, have been real. He told local news outlets that the time on the road has made his wife ‘100 times more spirited’ than she was before they left. Despite being wheelchair-bound, she has avoided muscle and joint atrophy, maintained good coordination, and can still communicate largely as she could before. Swallowing solid food has become a slightly greater challenge, a reminder that her condition has not stood still, even if its progression has slowed.
Strangers, Volunteers and 31 Provinces
The journey has drawn responses the couple did not anticipate. In 2017, in Hubei Province, staff at a scenic area volunteered to hoist Liu’s wife, wheelchair and all, and carry her to the only sightseeing vehicle available so she would not miss the view. Liu told local outlets he values that kind of help and tries to stay in contact with the people they meet along the way.
Their daughter had concerns from the start. The medical needs involved in caring for a partially paralysed person on the road are not small, and her objections were grounded in practical reality. Over time, as her mother’s health held and her spirits improved, those concerns eased. The road, it turned out, was doing something the hospital routine had not.
The couple’s story touches on something that does not fit neatly into conventional accounts of ageing or caregiving. Liu is not a trained medical professional navigating a system: he is a retired serviceman who learned what his wife needed and built a life around providing it, moving rather than stationary, outside rather than inside.
Liu and his wife met as primary school classmates and married after finishing school. The road trip was always something they had spoken about. The fact that it took the form it did, with a wheelchair, a converted camper van, and daily rehabilitation exercises at roadsides across 31 provinces, was not the plan. But according to Liu, it is the reason his wife is still as present as she is.
The couple are currently planning visits to lesser-known locations across China for their next stretch of travel, with two provinces still to go.
