I’ve often wondered what makes ‘traveling’ such a charming word to me. I feel to be tempted even just let the word out between my lips; my mind is lingering out of the place at the moment I starting to plan a new journey. What usually happens to us is that the wonderful memories from last travel drive us to plunge into the next trip. I have tried to recollect all those little things happened during my past travels, however, there is very little evidence of my joys in each time.

I can still smell the stink of vomit and rotten peaches when I think back the trip in 1995 even now. 17 years, that smell makes me sick of peaches for 17 years, every time I grab a peach on my hand, the scent of it always smelled like mixed with something stale and rancid. I tried to figure out who was the one vomit in the minibus, but there is a little lapse when my memory comes to this point. I thought it certainly was me, dad said it was someone else, then the stale smell must because of us, no, it was because of our peaches! Okay, at least we can reach an agreement on one thing.
We bought the peaches on the road from Lvshun to Dalian. The bus stopped in front of a stall stands alone by the road, orchards were located on low-lying area on each side of the road. Since all the peaches were from his own orchard, the owner was selling it at an unbelievable low price. Dad stuffed both his and mine bag with peaches. He said it was cheaper than water and other food.
We had have been away from home for almost 2 weeks, and still had another 2 weeks to go with a really tight budget. We spent money prudently, but we had got used to this kind of life since we lived from hand to mouth in all those years.
It is puzzled me that how could dad decide to start out on a journey under such a difficult condition at that time. Traveling seems to be a behavior that fit those who are pursuing the spiritual satisfaction, for our family, the salary of my parents could barely kept our life balance, no matter how frugal we were, having an extra traveling expense would aggravate our situation. The grown-up me feels a subtle aches on my heart for that puny little girl. But at that time, I never once got an idea about the poverty, and the hardships of life.
It seems that I was not interested in the beautiful views along the way in that trip, I have flicked through old photos in surprise that there are some places I have visited before, and have been totally unaware of.
Those fuzzy fruit were not that attractive to me; dad ate them in the morning, afternoon and night, but still, in the heat of that summer, nearly half of them ended up with rotted gradually in our bags. Dad was unreflective while I was a child of tender years; none of us have noticed the decaying peaches, until the air was thick with the rotten smell. That gross scent lingered around us almost all the rest of that trip.
With the nasty smell, the minibus went from Liaoning province all the way to the south, we arrived Qinhuangdao which is a city located in Hebei province. The city is famous for its coastal resort called Beidaihe. I guess the breath of salty air in every moment had let us forgot about the stink scent for a little while. Although Beaches are not rare in those cities we just had visited such as