Advanced neglect.

From the bald head to the bearded hippie in a few seconds: The time-lapse video shows a Munich student, as a one-year hike in China has changed. Actually, he wanted to walk up to Germany - but a sudden self-knowledge led him to abandon.

 

The room is empty, bare. In the middle stands a young man and looks with a serious look into the camera. Expectantly? Anxious? In any case decided. Determined, for years on the move to go - by walking from Beijing back to his parents' house in Bad Nenndorf to travel in Lower Saxony.

"I have my things by sea sent home, the key under the doormat, and I losgelaufen," says
Sinologiestudent Christoph Rehage. After one year language course in Beijing, he had no desire to put on the plane, and moved at the hiking shoes.

Here he was not actually a outdoor enthusiast. Cracked feet and clothes were miefende him more of an abomination. "Before I have always argued that we should be like an English gentleman, so even in the jungle still maintained look. But then my neighbor said in Beijing: but let the beard grow easily. That was also a challenge, sometimes really really rough .

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It quickly became clear: This unique neglect must be documented! So Rehage also grabbed a video camera and held it himself every day just before the nose. These mini-settings, he has now assembled his film. First, he is almost always alone in the picture, on country roads, hostels and gray before the first snow.

But after exercise, more and more people behind him around, children, whole villages. And also some pictures to his girlfriend from Beijing. He should know their parents who lived in the country's interior. Quite a fiasco, as he reported: "For whom did my bearded appearance is not good. Chinese parents eighth in a very neat appearance."

Itself is no longer appealing

He wandered on, and the film also helped against the loneliness that always came back when he and his small luggage carts through barren stretches of land withdrew. "In this monotony just what I needed to do. The regular work, so the pictures to make and to plan what it should be, which has given me structure."

By and by the routine: running, film, travel blog, run a film. Sometime Rehage asked themselves: Can I actually stop? Slowly came the grimly before. "And then, quite suddenly, in the middle of the desert, I have noticed: I myself am no longer sympathetic." In Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province, he heard, from one day to the other for exactly 4646 kilometers. Only he went to the hairdresser or on foot: In the film we see how a Chinese bekittelter knows him by the hair and beard removed. Back to baldness - and yet he looks quite different than the first images.

Of course, the journey has changed him - but even more its sudden end, as is Rehage secure. Something just on principle to do this is for him no longer in question. "I am no longer stresses as, for example at the university. I've learned that there is no question of any external circumstances to overcome and very hard to be. The point is that you can always change." That's why he wants to not even say whether he wants to go again to the rest of the route planned to run. An indication, however, there is already: Since a few months he learns Russian.