From Olympic Special, issue no.380, Augest 8, 2008
Written By Zou Bo
Original article: Chinese
Translated by Liang Duo

At the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the middle aged Li Kaiwei was passive and I had to repeatedly cajole him into action.

To tickle him, I stood upright with both legs pressed together but my feet spread out horizontally; the gesture finally cracked a smile on his face, and that was the beginning of our friendship.

He then drew out a bow tie from his knapsack and asked me to place it neatly on his collar. Doubting if I got it right, he pulled out a handheld mirror from his pocket to examine himself. In a corner of the mirror, red walls and the face of Chairman Mao in a distance entered the frame.

From a little jewel box, he took out a "mustache" and asked me to guess what it was made of. "I cut this out from a doll," he offered the answer.

The mustache was the ultimate prop, all faces could have hid behind that signature-cut mustache and claimed to be the legendary comedian Charlie Chaplin.

Olympic Mission
Li's bony and yellowish face reflected in the mirror, wearing an expression of determination, ready to take the stage - a scrawny Chinese role playing a westerner, and the mustache was his mask. Without the mustache, he appeared fatigue with a tinge of sadness.

His round eyes were bulging like a toy clown, hair around his tall forehead was wearing thin but when he took his hat off, revealing the long wavy locks, he looked rather like poet and novelist Edgar Allen Poe.

"Allen Poe? he was too melancholic, not me. I am challenging myself, in the name of Olympic. I am translating an idea into action," he retorted.

"But you look unhappy," I suggested.

"Beijing depresses me. I don't know what would make the people here laugh, or what would stop them from laughing," he said. Beijing was the destination he had been seeking, and yet upon arrival, he had difficulties adjusting himself.

The 45-year-old Li was once a finance manager for a hotel appliances supplier in the coastal city of Shenzhen in southern China.

Since spring this year, he had started impersonating Charlie Chaplin in the streets after working hours. That was in preparation for his quest of dressing up as Chaplin and trekking some 2,000 kilometers from Shenzhen to Beijing in commemorating of the Olympic Games.

On this year's April's fool day, he set out on foot, wearing a pair of Chaplin-style shoes, he walked 40 kilometers a day and took him 75 days to reach Beijing.

Li's wife, child and bosses supported his quest, and fueled his enthusiasm. However, a sense of rejection set in for Li after receiving the cold shoulder upon arriving in Beijing.

So dejected that he even needed me to cajole him into impersonating Chaplin, the alter ego he had adopted for his Olympic mission, at the Tiananmen Square. When he sank into his role, he was transformed, and crowds gathered around him.

The Lonely Trek
The day after the "performance" at the square, he and I set out for a trek from Beijing downtown to the Great Wall in the outskirt of the city. He said in a tone of mockery: "The Olympic doesn't seem to matter to me anymore, the sense of urgency has gone."

At the beginning of our Great Wall trek, my pace was faster than Li, who maintain a moderate yet steady speed. As time passed, I soon sank into boredom from the walk on highways that seemed endless, and I was not wearing the right shoes.

Li then taught me the skills of walking for long distance, mainly on how to mediate loneliness, to forget about the pain in the feet and the repetitive boredom.

"Mindless people would not be able to walk for far. All he cared was the time, constantly checking his watch, and kept asking himself and others when would he arrive," Li said.

"What's in your mind?" I asked.

"I have compressed my life experiences and favorite books into 75 essays. I recite these essays in a loop. In the beginning, I could only recite all the essays once, later I could recite them three rounds a day.

"Do you have any idea how Xuan Zhuang (a Chinese monk back in the Tang Dynasty who trek all the way to India seeking Buddhism scripture) succeed in his quest of journey to the West? That was because he recite mantra all the time," Li replied.

He then offered me his mobile earphone and asked me to listen -- I heard nothing, and I thought he had special gift in hearing certain frequencies that eluded most people, but his answer dissapointed me.

"I wear the earphone to fool others into believing I was talking over the phone. So that people would not mistaken me as a lunatic when I recite to myself."

On the way to the Great Wall, the sky poured. Li did not soldier on like a paratrooper, instead, he wrapped himself up with a water-proof sheet and waited underneath a bridge, chanting to himself.

When the rain halted, a rainbow emerged and formed an archway in the horizon. As Li unwrapped himself, a bundle of newspapers dropped out from the pocket of his long Chaplin suit.

The crumbled papers contained images of him, as Chaplin -- holding a cane, sporting a top-hat, bending with his rear pointed outwards.

As he collected the papers together, he complained of how the papers failed to mention his impersonating mission was in support of the Olympic, due to limited print space, apparently.

The reports were based on his performance the day earlier at the Tiananmen Square. On the way to the Great Wall, he had been observing passer-by, to see if they were reading the papers, if they noticed him.

He could not forget the moment when he was standing right next to a girl, who was staring at his picture in the papers, but she completely ignored his real-life presence by her side.