All the Way South: To the Edge of the World Book Preface

Can't Find the North

With the title "Can't Find the North", the preface to "All the Way South" is quite contradictory.

A few days ago, I saw four huge red letters on the transfer channel of Guomao Station, the busiest subway in Beijing - all the way north. This was an advertisement for a famous outdoor brand. Before that, The documentary "All the Way South" has been broadcast on Tourism TV for two rounds. When I first saw the title "All the Way South", I was attracted by its strong sense of direction. Because most women have a poor sense of direction, and I am a person who often has trouble finding direction in a square city like Beijing.

The Department of Psychology at Stanford University once conducted a test. They asked 5-year-old girls from a primitive tribe west of Cape York in northern Australia: Which side is north? The little girl immediately pointed out the direction without hesitation, accurately. After research, it was found that in the language of this tribe, there are no words such as "left" and "right" that express relative spatial relationships. Instead, the absolute basic directions of north, south, east, and west are used. It can be deduced from this that in fact, each of us is endowed with the ability to distinguish north and south when we are born. However, later on, a compass became available, and without a compass, more and more people began to be unable to find north.

In fact, there is another kind of north and south in life. The situation of encountering a series of difficulties in life and work and not knowing what to do and being tired of dealing with them is called "can't find the north". So what is the reason why our lives are in such a state of exhaustion? Is it because there are too many choices, too many temptations, too many roads? When the choice is no longer freedom but a burden, people begin to envy those who can go all the way south.

For Gu Yue and Liu Chang, all the way south is just their trip from Alaska to Argentina, but for most people who can't find the north, the four words "all the way south" contain at least two words. Layer guiding meaning - simplicity and persistence. Alexandre Dumas said in "The Count of Monte Cristo" that all human wisdom is contained in these four words: wait and hope. The simplicity and persistence of heading south cannot find the direction and hope of the north.

Travel TV President Wang Ping