Covering 12,000 kilometers by train or bus, and walking hundreds more, US expatriate Jeff Brown spent 44 days traveling rough through China's hinterlands, writes Mike Peters.

The average expatriate in China never thinks there is enough time to see the country properly. Many foreigners have two or three weeks of holiday, and if they want to go home once a year, that leaves no time to explore distant, rural locales far from the big cities where they work.

So at first glance, Jeff Brown's adventure last year, recently published in book form as 44 Days Backpacking in China, looks like a dream come true. But Brown's idea of a vacation may strike some as pretty hard work.

In that six-week stretch, the 50-something American from Oklahoma covered 12,000 kilometers by train or bus, and walked hundreds more. He knows that most foreigners, even those that live in China like himself, have their ideas about the mainland's opening up shaped by a Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou perspective. So he wanted to visit the hinterlands - provinces he'd never seen - to see how rapid changes in China have affected people there.

Brown is no stranger to foreign places: He traveled to Brazil as a graduate student "seeking his fortune" and then worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia. He learned Arabic and French in the next eight years (1982-1990), working in Africa and the Middle East, and then brought his French wife, Florence, to China for seven years, where they had two sons and he learned to speak Chinese. After stints in France and the United States, the Browns came back to China in 2010.

"I worked in corporate management and business ownership for 28 years, and teaching for seven," he says. "All of these iterations have brought me into contact with thousands of individuals from every walk of life: princes, paupers, politicos, populists, tin-pot tyrants, worldly saints and humble citizens - originals all," he says. "Most were just trying to survive and be happy."

Having summers off while he teaches at an international school provided the time for his trek last year that prompted him to write 44 Days. And while he deliberately chose to visit provinces he didn't see during his first years in China, it was people more than places that he sought out - eager to share their lives and experiences.

"That kind of travel is not for everybody," he says, laughing. "I traveled really rugged, on local trains and no taxis - even in places where there were taxis. I stayed in local hostels and ate in local restaurants that most foreigners wouldn't want to go to."

Brown's facility for languages and his eagerness to engage with rural citizens made the journey both possible and fruitful, but even those assets didn't make it easy. At Jiayuguan in Gansu province, for example, his first successful stay at a Chinese hostel began with a flat refusal: "I can't let you stay here."

Brown smiles at the memory.

Self-taught over a seven-year period, Brown says Chinese was the hardest of his languages to learn - while Arabic, another tongue that foreigners find extremely challenging, he found easier to learn than French. "In Arabic there are no irregular verbs, and there are only 28 characters," he says. "Compared to Chinese, it's a breeze."

Brown recounts his adventures in a breezy style, regularly referencing China's growing economic importance in the world to the lives of ordinary citizens he meets. He took notes like mad for his blog, 44days.net, but by the time he got home he'd recorded 80,000 words - more than half of those into his cellphone - and decided he had to write a book.

"The thing that blew me away on the trip," he says, "was how the people - even in the remote places - were so much more sophisticated and tolerant in their dealing with an outsider like me.

"In 1990, foreigners were viewed like zoo creatures. I really could sense that the 'cultural revolution' (1966-76) had generated a lot of lingering mistrust," he says.

"Now, even in a place like Guizhou - where I was still quite exotic - people were not only very nice but generous, too. People greeted me, helped me, bought me stuff, gave me stuff," he says. In Chishui - the city in Guizhou province he considers to be "the real Shangri-La" - he roamed in an open-air market where the merchants included a working dentist and sellers of rice, tea, bamboo and Maotai.

"I stayed all day and ate like a king," he says. "Later when I was ready to go to Guiyang, a man jumped up and went to buy the train ticket for me!"

Guizhou province was a favorite destination, Brown says, but he hopes that even better experiences await him. This summer he will go to the US for a family wedding, he says, but he's already making plans for a new China road trip in 2015, where he plans to see "new" provinces and regions including the Guanxi Zhuang autonomous region, Hunan, Henan and Anhui.

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.

Over a six-week journey, Jeff Brown backpacks through China's hinterlands to see how rapid changes have affected people there. Photos Provided to China Daily

Brown says he traveled really rugged, a style not suited for everyone.

(China Daily 01/19/2014 page5)