Gao is quite something: at the same age (just several months younger), he has been to Tibet 15 times since 1994, including 5 times by bicycle – he rode his bicycle alone along all routes: Chuanzang, Dianzang, Qingzang and Xinzang. He also rode his bicycle from Hangzhou all the way to Eastern Europe!
Gaos MSN portrait is Winnie the Pooh – he always jokes that he is just a bear since he looks like one. But his inner world is truly beautiful: he has a big heart: he volunteered to teach in a hope school of the poorest region in China for one year, where he had to sleep on straw and spend his own money buying textbooks for the children; he always helps local people and other travelers since he is really good at mechanics. While we were in Lhasa, one evening he didnt join us for dinner because he had to fix three bicycles for other people. Once he fixed the tracter of a tribe in Xinjiang and was invited to a local wedding as a honored guest:) He is good at calligraphy, loves classic music and his profession is artificial intelligence technology, and both of his parents are from very prestigious families in China but you can never tell if you see him on the street – he is probably one of the humblest people you know.
Jie and I were absolutely thankful to get Gao as our travel partner/guide – he knows the routes almost as the back of his hands: he remembers each mountains names which are really difficult to even pronounce since most of them were just translation from Tibetan or other minority languages. He knows where to stay or eat, when to leave and what to do, he knows the car so well that he can fix most of the problems himself, and the best is, he has so many adventurous stories to tell everywhere we go because he had experienced so much.
I hope one day he would finally decide to write his stories down – that can really benefit a lot of people.