With only one person, one dog and one bicycle, he gained 100,000 followers on Bilibili

The video account "Xiaohui's Drifting" has become popular. What makes him stand out from the crowd of cycling up and attract public attention? This article interviewed Xiaohui, the owner of the video account, and asked him to share his opportunity to embark on cycling, the hardships of cycling life, and the beliefs that support Xiaohui's cycling. Friends who yearn for cycling travel can take a sneak peek.

"I am free as the wind."

Because of Xu Wei's song, I wonder how many people have imagined putting on headphones, packing their bags, and traveling around the world in a car.

In fact, as early as around 2012, many travel enthusiasts thought of traveling around China by cycling. They would take photos while riding and share their cycling experiences. At that time, I watched a documentary called "Traveling in Xinjiang" and almost bought a car and rushed out of the house.

During this period, many bloggers and Weibo celebrities emerged, updating their cycling records online, which aroused the envy and yearning of many young people.

In the past two years, with the explosion of video platforms, cycling videos have begun to flourish. They have risen at an extremely fast speed and have become one of the most popular categories. Bloggers who travel by bike are no longer limited to simple records, but continue to iterate their cycling videos, making it a separate content type, and even deriving many sub-contents.

If you want to see natural scenery, then open "Traveling in Xinjiang" and you can see from Shennongjia all the way to Qinling Mountains, Qinghai Lake and Dunhuang.

If you like humanities, then Zhu Zhiwen's recently popular ten-year global travel is very suitable for you. In his perfect integration into the records of various countries, you can experience the local customs and cultures through the camera.

By the way, there is also @徐云漂流中国. Although this guy is controversial, you cannot deny his rapid popularity. He started posting videos in the second half of 2021 and quickly grew into a phenomenal Internet celebrity in two years. Half of his videos on Bilibili have exceeded one million views, and they focus on authenticity and hardship.

Although the content and quality of cycling videos are far less exciting than those of live videos, netizens are always flocking to them. In recent years, new bloggers have continued to pour in, and cycling videos, especially those of backpacking, have become a popular self-media industry and even a startup project.

Recently, Mr. Bad Review, who surfs the Internet frequently, suddenly saw a video of a man riding a bicycle on Bilibili. The cover looked ordinary at first glance, but the data was extremely popular, with nearly 5 million views, which can be said to be a sudden rise.

There are a lot of cycling videos on video websites nowadays. Just looking at the banned tags, I really can’t figure out what’s different about this video and why it suddenly became popular. I couldn’t resist my curiosity and clicked in to take a look.

I never expected that the opening would be a thunderbolt.

It turns out that this video comes from the up-loader @小辉漂流记. At this time, he had been riding for a year and had only 1,000 yuan left. He was challenging himself to see how far he could ride. On the 38th day of the challenge, at a pass at an altitude of 4,800 meters, he met this big brother.

The eldest brother drove here by himself, but maybe he was tired from the long journey and had a lot of accumulated emotions. After talking with Xiaohui, he found out that he had come all the way here on just a bicycle. He was instantly shocked, and this led to the opening scene.

My brother is really kind and he even gave me a whole box of glucose.

Just seeing this, you may not understand the elder brother, but if you continue reading, you will see that Xiaohui’s trip is very different from the journey we imagined. There is almost no comfort at all, and it is full of "cultivation".

In the video, he pushed a bicycle full of luggage up a series of long uphill slopes. One section was full of mud because it started snowing. He fell down at one point. Then he found a place on the mountain to set up a tent, packed up his things, ate some compressed biscuits, and that was his day.

At the end of the video, he calculated today's expenses: 0 yuan, and the remaining funds were 748 yuan.

From the lightning strike at the opening, to the record of the difficult climb up the mountain, to the final "vagrant"-like life, these scenes made netizens very excited, and soon this video was sent to the fourth place in the entire site rankings. This previously unknown up with only 43 fans also gained 100,000 fans in just one week.

In this age of lifestyle, why do some people choose to join the ranks of "ascetic" cycling? Is this industry easy to work in? What are the daily lives and mental states of these cyclists like?

With these curiosities, Chapingjun also contacted @小辉漂流记 and talked to him about the stories of his journey.

For Xiaohui, there is no threshold to getting on a bike and leaving home. It is more like a desperate choice.

After graduating from high school, he went to Beijing to work. In his words, "like Wang Baoqiang once was," he squatted in front of the Beijing Film Studio for several years, working as a day laborer, earning 50 to 60 yuan a day. He lived in a basement that only cost a few hundred yuan a month to rent, ate two simple meals a day, and had little left after paying the rent.

After living like this for almost 10 years, it was the second half of 2022, and he suddenly felt that such endlessly repetitive days were meaningless and hopeless.

So he bought a ticket for the green train and came to Chongqing, bought some second-hand cycling equipment, and set off for Lhasa.

Record of the first day of departure

The bad reviewer also asked Xiaohui, "Even if you don't want to stay in Beijing anymore, there are many other options. Why do you choose cycling?"

"I had no money left, and I had never traveled so far away since I was a child. I might as well go out and see the beautiful rivers and mountains of my motherland. Although I didn't make any money, it was nice to gain a lot of experience."

Coincidentally, @徐云漂流中国 also mentioned the reason why he chose to ride in a video about himself:

"I worked in an electronics factory to make a living, but later lost my job. Cycling became my escape from the mundane life. I no longer had to stay in the same place and face the same people every day."

It was not easy to embark on the road of cycling, because Xiaohui had almost no cycling experience before. After setting out, he felt uncomfortable for a while and often bought what he needed. His savings of less than 10,000 yuan were quickly consumed.

For most people, traveling around the country with only a few bags and a bicycle is probably unimaginably hard.

Sleeping is a big problem. Xiaohui usually lives wherever he goes, from the wilderness to abandoned houses, under roadside rocks and in black pipes between fields. The most difficult time was in Yunnan, when he couldn't find a suitable place and simply slept in the toilet hall next to a cemetery for a night.

He eats two meals a day during the journey. For most people, the meals in the video are just enough to get by at best, but during the journey, these are his normal "three meals a day", and the meals are even a good choice. Sometimes he just eats some dry food.

By the way, during the Chinese New Year in 2023, most people went home to reunite and have the New Year’s Eve dinner. Xiaohui’s New Year’s Eve dinner was this scrambled eggs with lettuce.

If sleeping and three meals can be self-sufficient, then drinking water, charging and Internet issues will all depend on the weather.

Public places in cities and village committees can all be sources of supply. Xiaohui was in Tibet recently, and he told Chapingjun, "If there is a house nearby, I will charge it at their house, and then go to their house to get it when I leave. Many Tibetan compatriots are very enthusiastic and often ask me if I want to eat something, and tell me what fruits they grow at home. Sometimes I refuse to take it, but they will give it to me directly."

After finishing his meal, what awaited him was not only the beautiful scenery along the way, but also continuous uphill slopes. As the wheels turned repeatedly, he pedaled across one road after another.

If these video images are not vivid enough, then the following two things should help you better understand the lives of cycling bloggers.

When Xiaohui first set out from Chongqing, he rode with a friend, but because it was hot summer, his friend couldn't stand it after one day of riding, so they broke up the next day.

Xiaohui said that he drank at least two bottles of 1.5 liters of water every day because he was sweating all the time. The cold water he bought was soon turned into boiling water by the sun. He rode in the hot sun during the day, and felt uncomfortable as if he was being pricked by needles when he slept at night.

A journey that left a deeper impression on Xiaohui was the one on the southern line of Genyen, where he pushed a cart despite the altitude sickness. The mountain was deserted and extremely cold. He did not dare to light a fire at the time, so he just endured the cold and slept all night. He woke up from the cold several times after getting up. After getting up, he pushed the cart up the slope while vomiting despite the discomfort and altitude sickness.

These things that seem unbearable for ordinary people are things they need to face as soon as they open their eyes.

In addition to solving the problems of food, clothing, housing and transportation and enduring extreme weather, as a videographer, he also has to edit these life records into videos. He told Chapingjun that he spends about 4-5 hours a day riding, and more than 2 hours looking for places to set up tents and eat. He is not proficient in the use of editing software, and often takes pictures of everything he sees, and then screens, edits and looks for music when he finds a place to rest. One video takes 3-4 hours a day, and he repeats this process.

But in Xiaohui's description, the cycling journey is still meaningful to him.

When he was in Tibet, he would stand on the mountain and watch others herding yaks.

In Sichuan and Yunnan, his favorite thing is to attend the market (also known as the "Ganbai" in some places), where he can see many local delicacies.

The entry threshold of this industry is neither low nor too low. You have to be willing to "wander", be able to withstand the hardships of life, be able to express yourself to some extent, and be able to edit videos.

But it is not too high. It does not require any cost. One person, one car, and you can go whenever you want. There is no start-up capital required.

However, correspondingly, due to the low cost, a large number of people who want to make a living from the media have flocked into this field in recent years. It is now difficult to become popular, and it is even more difficult to make money from it.

Before this viral video, Xiaohui had been updating his video for more than a year, but he only had 43 followers. Because the number of followers was so small, he was very impressed by this number.

The income was even more of a drop in the bucket. During this year, he mainly updated Douyin, Bilibili and Xigua Video, and also updated on other platforms. However, "the daily income was often not enough to buy a bottle of water." For a long time, he was in debt and even borrowed some money from friends to continue riding.

It wasn't until this year that the big data algorithm of fate began to work and he gradually got better.

For Xiaohui, he has no idea where the end of the journey is. If he can't make money, he can only find a job quickly to pay off his debts. But what if he can make money?

"There are many places where I need to spend money. My bicycle had a flat tire on the first day I arrived in Lhasa. The axle is also not working properly and needs to be repaired. My cell phone should also be replaced. It is really old. I also want to buy a drone. I see many bloggers use it to take photos."

Xiaohui doesn’t have so many imaginations about the future. He just wants to keep riding and not go back to the monotonous days.

Xiaohui's feat of "wandering" cycling made him a little famous on Bilibili, but also caused him a lot of controversy. Many netizens questioned him. Some people thought it was embarrassing and left messages like "It's too embarrassing, you should go home". Some people thought it was a show, "How can a person live like this? There must be a team."

Some people were also inspired by Xiaohui's experience. They left enthusiastic messages and wished him to become the next Xu Yun.

I also wondered why there is such a strong and enduring demand for this type of video. In fact, the reason why the public needs cycling videos is exactly the same as the reason why cycling bloggers choose to set out.

Initially, cycling bloggers did not want to live a repetitive life anymore. They hoped that every day they would live a dynamic life and gain knowledge from all over the world. The audience was also consuming the natural landscapes and cultural features captured by the lens.

Through Xu Yun's lens, they see the snowy northern Sichuan-Tibet region, the dust and snow of Ali, and the distant frontier.

Through Zhu Zhiwen's lens, you can feel the customs and culture of Afghanistan, see and feel the real society of the Afghan people, and even "sit down" to chat and drink with local residents, and feel their confusion and optimism.

Before talking to Xiaohui, I thought that the endless life of cycling bloggers was like that in "Black Mirror". They turned on the camera, repeated the same action with their legs, and waited for gold coins to pop up on the other side of the Internet to obtain survival resources.

But now I think that maybe for these cyclists and onlookers, the daily routine of commuting between two points is more like a prison. Although they are typing different words, they are actually pedaling the wheels hard in their hearts.

The seemingly repetitive pedaling allows the heart and eyes to fly further. The videos of these bloggers not only provide a variety of information and insights, but also successfully pull them out of the cubicle through a "real sense of body", temporarily getting rid of the troubles and trivialities of reality.

Compared with those carefully designed surprising scenes on the mobile phone screen, the altitude sickness when climbing the mountain, the scene of vegetables being robbed by yaks, and the moments of spending the night in abandoned houses, these undecorated and undesigned clips can be called boring reality. But after watching these videos, you will find that the boring reality is more touching than those deliberately produced surprising fictions.

In 2015, there was a phrase that went viral on the Internet: "The world is so big, I want to go see it." This phrase came from the resignation letter of a female psychology teacher at Henan Experimental Middle School and became one of the top ten Internet terms of the year.

The reason why this sentence became popular is that this teacher did something that many people have always wanted to do but could not do. This is also the social psychology behind the popularity of this type of cycling travel video.

Most people, when they were young, had the dream of "traveling around the world with a sword and seeing the prosperity of the world". These imaginations are in stark contrast to the reality they face as adults.

You sit at your desk, looking at the endless work that you can never finish, thinking about the heavy KPI and difficult-to-serve boss, and wondering what takeout to order in the evening. You refuse to admit defeat, and your work ability is not that bad, but in the end you still live a monotonous and boring life. You comfort yourself that you have no money and no time.

But when you click on the video, you find that there are people who have nothing but have gone further than you have in your entire first half of life.

You had no choice but to click on "follow" and squeeze into the bag on the back seat of his bicycle through an Internet cable.

Sources of pictures and information: "Black Mirror", Bilibili, Weibo, etc. Watermarks can be seen in most of the picture sources.

Author: Bad Review

WeChat public account: Chaping (ID: chaping321)