Travels far learn much: Seven-yr-old girl visited 16 states in one year

(People's Daily Online) 13:12, March 27, 2015

Meimei poses for a photo on Mount Chomolangma. (Courtesy of Su Yao.)

Having resigned from their jobs, a couple from Wenzhou took their seven year old daughter for a year-long global tour. It sounds crazy but super cool! The family traveled to 16 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, covering three continents. Their story has gone viral on Wechat.

Su Yao and her husband are keen on cultural exchange. In August 2013, they decided to take their daughter Meimei abroad for a holiday. At first, the family planned only to go to England and Ireland. After arriving in the UK, Su Yao found it was easy to get a visa to Turkey with a UK visa. So the whole family went on to the ancient town of Istanbul.

After that, they kept identifying 'new opportunities'. They visited Lebanon and Jordan, crossed the Red Sea, stepped onto the magical African continent, then retraced their steps to Asia, climbing Mount Chomulangma in Nepal...

Without a concrete plan, they took each country as it came. The family spent nearly a year on their globetrotting. Finally they returned to Wenzhou in July 2014.

Su Yao has a doctoral degree and is a woman with a “liberal and unfettered spirit” as she puts it. She has a unique perspective on traveling. In her view, traveling is as natural as everyday life. Of their 12-month journey, Su says “they just took a few steps in the global village” and it was no big deal.

Meimei, their daughter was in grade one when they started the trip. Now she is in grade three. Su Yao said that her daughter’s academic performance has not been affected much by the tour.

In fact, Meimei did not give up her studies during the tour. Su Yao prepared a series of English textbook "homeschooling" lessons for her daughter. Su and her daughter reached an agreement on a weekly assignment. Meimei did fine with her homeschooling.

In many foreign countries, Meimei had to speak English every day. After a year’s practice she had made a lot of progress with her English. Su Yao says that her daughter is very strong in logical thinking. With the help of heuristic teaching, mathematics is not a problem to Meimei.

"Perhaps the only subject that Meimei needs to work harder on is Chinese" says Su. However, since Su loves literature, she often read poems to Meimei during the trip. Meimei can recite many of these poems, which is good for her writing, according to Su.

During the trip Su Yao also took Meimei to visit local schools and encouraged her to communicate with teachers and students.

Neither Su Yao nor her husband think they have neglected Meimei’s studies. On the contrary, they think that traveling has helped their daughter to learn spontaneously. Meimei has developed both perseverance and self-consciousness.

Before they left for each new country, the couple looked on the internet for local families who were willing to share rooms with them. For one quarter of trip they were couch surfers.

In Lebanon, Meimei experienced the sorrow of separating from their home-stay family. For the first time she found how close she could be to people who were not blood relations.

Before Meimei met with Ajun in Nepal, she could not imagine what a struggle life can be for some boys and girls around her age. With the consent of his parents, Su Yao and her husband decided to provide Ajun with long-term funding for his education.

As a Chinese sayign goes, "travel far, learn much". Through the trip, Meimei's eyes have been opened, and she has become more confident and stronger in her mind.

(For the latest China news, Please follow People's Daily onTwitter andFacebook)(Editor:Gao Yinan,Yao Chun)

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