El Che - 了切格瓦拉

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (aka Che Guevara) was 23 and about to finish his medical studies when he embarked on the grandest journey of his life with his friend, the biochemist, Alberto Granado, in order to discover his native South America he knew so little of. In the ultimate med-school elective of all time, where he traveled 10,000 kilometers (~6000 miles) by motorbike and foot to treat the leperers of Peru, he learnt about the never ending social struggles of his people and others across South America. Then he became a communist revolutionary and the story from there on has become legend.

I wonder, when I reach 23 at the end of the month and begin my last year of PhD studies, will I ever get a chance to make the grandest journey of my life to discover my native China I know too little about, on a motorcycle, or by foot? No, PhD students don’t get electives like medics do (but we do get international conferences lasting a week). Neither can I hook up with labs in China to do placements (yet). But I feel compelled, one day, to travel through my old land (my ??) and see the struggles of the people I once – and hopefully will again – call my own. I don’t want to become another communist hero – I think we’ve had enough crap in the 20^th Century already! But it’s time someone unveiled the economic-miracle-mask that covers China’s hundred million poor and did something. Sure I’d probably get into trouble along the way but life is a risk right?

“You have to understand that for a trip like this to happen, you have to be a bad son, bad brother, bad boyfriend and you had to leave. Otherwise you wouldn’t go.” – Alberto Granado.
The Motorcycle Diaries (a tribute to Che Guevara’s epiphany)