15-Year-Old Girl’s World Tour

Chen Dong

In ancient China， many scholars pursued a lifetime goal of reading 10，000 books and traveling 10，000 miles. For these ancients， traveling to see the real world was as important as reading books to understand the world. The idea has been kept much alive in Chinese culture. The 15-year-old girl Wu Yiting in Hangzhou has been following the steps of these ancients. So far， she has visited more than 20 countries including the USA， Britain， France， Australia， New Zealand， Japan， Thailand， Russia， Italy， Austria， Sweden， Switzerland， Finland， the Netherlands， Norway， and Monaco. She has been traveling with her parents since she was very young.

She caught the eyes of many people early this year because she competed successfully to appear in the 2019 season of Super Brain， a blockbuster reality show produced and aired by Jiangsu Satellite TV. This year， she was the only one from Hangzhou who passed all the preliminary stages to enter the final 100. She decided to take part in the program on the impulse largely because of Zhang Mengnan who had appeared in a previous season of Super Brain. She thought Zhang was cool and became his fan. So she tried to take part in the show. She did not care very much about winning or losing in the brutal competition. She just wanted to have that experience. She doesnt know exactly how she qualified in the first place. Qualifying itself indicates that she is really a brainy girl. After all， she managed to make it into the top 100 out of over 120，000 candidates who participated in the preliminary audition.

吳亦婷曾在法国尼姆古罗马圆形竞技场游玩。Wu Yiting at an ancient Roman arena in Nimes， France

在英国伦敦大英博物馆。Wu Yiting at the British Museum in London

吴亦婷在旅行中也不忘阅读。Wu Yiting takes a break in an overseas sightseeing trip.

But Wu does not think she has a super brain. She thinks she is just ordinary when it comes to her school life. She loves to take part in many kinds of activities on the campus， but she doesnt have a passion for any one of them. Once she designed an alert gadget on the dorm door so that she could have time to hide away a book she read if a teacher came to visit. The gadget worked， but teachers didnt visit her dorm.

She observes the world and does her thinking independently. And that is a quality her father wishes to see in her. Working at a university， her father hopes she grows up with an independent mind. Setting so many rules and guidelines may not work at all， he says. And the parents believe that she must decide what kind of person she wants to be after she grows up. Such a big thing should not be their decision， they believe.

Traveling around the world helps her grow. The girl and her parents travel to educate themselves and broaden their vision and perspectives. They choose not to drive while traveling in foreign countries. They prefer taking public transport so that they can get exposed to local people and things more closely. Museums and galleries are their favorite destinations. For example， they spent two days visiting the British Museum and Natural History Museum while they were in London.

The experiences have given her the stuff for thought. One of the persons she remembers clearly was an old woman she met in a national park in Switzerland. She learned the old woman came to sit on a lakeside bench to watch sunset whenever it was fine and the old woman had done so for more than 40 years. The young girl didnt get to find out why， but she was moved by this experience. Wu was also deeply impressed by the tidiness of streets in Japan. One of the most spectacular scenes she saw on her overseas visits occurred on a farm in New Zealand. She saw several sheepdogs herding a large flock of sheep. “The spectacular scene is beyond words，” the girl notes. While on a small island in Norway， she witnessed a sunset moment while taking a stroll. Her footsteps disturbed some butterflies which fluttered their wings out of grasses. That moment made her feel as if she had been in a fairyland.

“Traveling overseas allows me to experience different cultures and people，” confesses the 15-year-old girl， ”Chinese culture is dearest to me and Hangzhou is dearest to me because of its sense of safety， its beauty， and my friends and family in this city.”