In 1924, an 18-year-old girl drove around the world to Beijing, leaving behind this image

Aloha, the first woman to drive around the world. A 1.8-meter-tall girl with blond hair and blue eyes drove a jeep through the ancient Xizhimen, around Beihai Tuancheng, and through the rice fields at the foot of Yuquan Mountain. Such a scene would have been shocking enough in Beijing nearly a hundred years ago. Moreover, the girl in the camera is the first woman to drive around the world, and she is the adventure star Aloha with a legendary life.

Aloha and Walter took photos with the police on duty under the Xizhimen Gate.

People surrounded Aloha and her Model T car, looking at the scene with curious eyes. A tall "foreign woman"

Sailed through Tuancheng and entered the south gate of Beihai

In 1922, Aloha, who was fostered in a French monastery, saw an advertisement, It read "Brains, Beauty and Breeches - A Lucky Woman's World Tour, Joining an Expedition, Traveling Throughout Asia and Africa..." The 16-year-old girl made a recruitment call, thus starting a 380,000-mile journey around the world. Brigade and passed through Beijing in 1924.

The girl is applying for the job of "Captain" Walter Vanderveer's French translator, driver and secretary, and Walter is going to participate in the "Million Dollar Global Rally", who can drive a Ford Model T to visit more... The country with more countries can win the final victory.

At that time, automobiles were not common in most parts of the world, and there were not many roads for automobiles. The Vandeville Expedition modified a Ford Model T, equipped with a gun scabbard, and the back of the vehicle tilted and unfolded to serve as a darkroom.

In terms of funding, in addition to Ford sponsorship, each expedition also had to market itself by selling commemorative brochures, giving public speeches, and making movies, and the young and beautiful Arrowhat could attract attention. Even as the public grew tired of "Million Dollar Bet," her charisma kept the adventure alive.

In August 1924, Aloha entered China from Tianjin. Like many of her other experiences, many details of this journey in China remain unknown. From the current photos and notes, we can see some of her footprints in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, and outside China, the most common of which were her travels in Beijing.

Aloha once wrote in his notes that when he was preparing to go to Beijing, he was discouraged by the Tianjin police. At that time, Beijing was at the core of the Zhizhi-Fengtian War. In the eyes of the police, there were only "barbaric guys, new floods, famines, bandits, and civil war." Although the trip to Beijing was filled with gloom, Walter still decided to "keep going, get the job done, and not back down."

Even during the Zhili-Fengtian War, Beijing still had a quiet and indifferent side. She wrote: "Everything on the street was being pulled by people, men and women. It was hard to imagine that the shoulders and legs of these people, as well as their hearts, had to bear such a heavy weight. The coolies tied up the goods. On the back, or carried on a bamboo pole, or pushed on a cart... The Temple of Heaven is a breathtaking, transcendent, and holy place. Only the emperors of China could humbly worship their gods in front of the altar.

After leaving Beijing, Aloha experienced the bloodshed and cruelty of the war zone in Shanhaiguan. At that time, Shenyang was "made up of earthen walls and residential buildings made of fortresses", and "the beautiful residential areas in the suburbs were all belonging to A club for foreigners.”

During the seven-year epic journey, they ventured through 43 countries on four continents, from Africa to the Middle East and then to Asia. In the video, Aloha pitched a tent at the foot of the Sphinx in Egypt; while crossing the arid land of India, a T-car was dragged by buffalo; in Mecca, a woman disguised herself as a man and entered a mosque to pray; in Siberia, she was The Red Army awarded him the "Honorary Colonel" medal. By the time the documentary "Around the World" was released in 1929, Aloha had become famous as a movie star and ambassador for world peace.

During the long journey, Aloha and Walter became a couple, but their adventures continue. The film "Flights to the Stone Age", which records her adventures in the Amazon jungle, contains the earliest images of the Bororo tribe in South America and has now become an important anthropological historical document.

The two men’s journey ended bizarrely in 1932. On December 5, Walter was attacked and killed on his yacht near Long Beach, California. The murder was a sensation and remains unsolved to this day. But Aloha didn't stop. In 1933, she and her new husband traveled to New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, India, Cambodia and other places. During this period, she wrote her autobiography, "Adventures," in which she recounted interesting travel details such as lubricating her car with crushed bananas and using elephant oil as engine oil.

In her later years, Aloha collected films, photographs, journals, and artifacts from her travels and donated much of her work to museums and educational institutions in the United States. On June 4, 1996, this legendary woman passed away.

In 1924, Aloha and Walter climbed the Temple of Heaven.

Those seemingly impossible feats were all real, except her name. At that time, it was Walter who changed the name of the girl Idris to Aloha. In Hawaiian, the word means "hello" or "goodbye".