The Chinese man who ran to the top of the world
Runner Bai Bin unfurls the Chinese flag at the end of his epic journey.
One man, 433 days, 14 countries, 24,110 kilometers — the equivalent of 600 marathons — and a terrifying kidnap ordeal. Chinese runner Bai Bin has accomplished an epic journey in running from Antarctica to the Arctic.
The passion, courage and perseverance of the 49-year-old are a perfect interpretation of the saying: “Don’t limit your challenges. Challenge your limits.”
His journey began on March 1, 2018, from China’s Great Wall Station in Antarctica, crossing Chile, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States and Canada, to finally end at the Arctic Ocean at 7:19am Canadian time on May 8.
When he arrived at the Arctic Ocean, he fell backward onto the frozen sea to celebrate his success. “I just wanted to be lying on the ice longer to relax and even have a good rest but it was too cold on the ice,” Bai told Shanghai Daily after his return to China.
“My mind went blank at that moment, I felt kind of relieved because it’s finally done. I could go back to my home country, have delicious food after so many days. I missed my family and I was not used to the food in foreign countries. Eating had really been a big challenge for me.
“It was my best day, of course, to arrive after finishing the last 105 kilometers under adverse weather in a snowstorm and temperatures of minus 19 degrees.”
Of course, Bai could not run every step of the way. He crossed the Drake Passage between the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica and South America's Cape Horn by air and the Strait of Magellan between the mainland tip of South America and Tierra del Fuego by ship. He canoed across the Darien Gap in Panama and crossed a frozen river in Canada by snowmobile.
When Bai Bin arrived at the Arctic Ocean, he fell backward onto the frozen sea to celebrate his success.
He intended to complete the journey in around 300 days, but it took him about four months longer because of many unexpected difficulties.
Bai had a core steam of five members to support him throughout. At one time it grew to 11. Some had to drop out because of emergencies or personal reasons. Just two people were with him at the finishing point. However, no one was with him throughout the entire 433-day journey. “The team leader Li Zhenyu was robbed in San Francisco and lost his passport and other documents, so he had to fly back home to have those reissued. He was by my side for the last three days,” Bai said.
The trek is reckoned to have cost almost 4 million yuan (US$579,000). It was sponsored by an educational organization, but that proved not enough to cover the expedition, and Bai had to launch a fundraising campaign on social media midway through his trip.
“The reason I could finish such a long journey is that I love running, and I have been dedicated to ultra distance running for almost 20 years,” Bai said.
“Also, I wanted to prove that Chinese also have ambitions of exploring the unknown through running.”
Bai, a native of southwest China’s Guizhou Province, fell in love with running in the mountainous region when he was a child. After working at a state-owned company for just three months, he started a business selling computers and related devices. But in 2000, he started to devote himself to running — his favorite hobby. He ran from Guiyang, capital of Guizhou, to Tibet and was in training for the marathon at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
However, his Olympic dream was shattered after he got frostbite while stranded in a snowstorm climbing a mountain in Tibet. Doctors said his legs might have to be amputated but Bai protested: "I am a runner, how can I run without legs?" Eventually he recovered but he lost a part of a toe on one foot and has a permanent hole in the heel of the other one.
He did not lose heart, entering every distance event he could find to continue his running career. Between 2006 and 2008 he won titles in various disciplines including the triathlon and trail running.
But Bai was not content just winning competitions. In 2011, he undertook a bigger challenge — a Silk Road run which took him 150 days to cover almost 10,000km from Istanbul in Turkey to Xi’an in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, along with ultra marathon runner Kevin Lin from Taipei. En route, he came up with the idea of running the world from south to north.
“I felt 10,000 was easy for me,” Bai said. "I thought I needed a real challenge to push my limits and it occurred to me that running from Antarctica to the Arctic would be the perfect route, because they are the southernmost and northernmost places on Earth, and a route much longer than the Silk Road."
Snow in Canada as Bai Bin powers his way toward the Arctic Ocean.
Not long after he set off, Bai encountered first problem — a month of strong adverse winds in Tierra del Fuego. “I didn’t even know where to put my feet because the wind would blow my feet away,” he said. He strained his calves after two weeks but that didn’t stop him, he just took it a little easier. Luckily, his legs recovered after a week.
After about five months into the trip, he suffered his most serious injury and he became ill near the Panama and Colombia border where the only land route is the Darien Gap. One of the most remote and inaccessible areas in the Western Hemisphere, it is home to vipers and beasts as well as Colombian rebel groups and drug dealers.
Bai planned to run through the jungle, but “locals warned us not to cross the gap because some people had been killed the other day in that area. So we had to choose to cross it by kayak instead of running for safety concerns.”
But he was not as good at kayaking, as he was at running. He got severe sunburn on his feet and had to go to hospital to be treated for bacterial infections. He also had a narrow escape when a 3-meter-high wave swamped his boat and crashed it into rocks.
He recovered from his illness but the antibiotic treatments he had in hospital significantly impaired his strength and vigor.
In Mexico, he felt as if he might collapse as he ran but the thought of giving up could not have been farther from his mind.
Bai kayaks to cross the Darien Gap in August under scorching weather. He sustained sunburn on his feet after nine days at sea and had to go to hospital to be treated for bacterial infections.
However, natural disasters and injuries were not the toughest challenges he encountered.
On November 12 in Mexico, approximately 52 kilometers from the border with the US, Bai had a terrifying experience when he was kidnapped.
Police had told him and his team of a section of Highway 97 was so dangerous they didn't dare be on duty there because it was gang territory.
“We deliberately started running at 10am when traffic was already busy with cars coming and going. We supposed no crimes would take place in broad daylight,” Bai said.
But after a warmup walk of only 2 kilometers, a car suddenly drew up alongside and the people inside talked to him in Spanish. “I can’t understand Spanish, but I can guess they asked me what I was doing there. I realized immediately they were bad guys, but kept on running saying ‘I don’t know.’
“The car bore down upon me, and I found myself at gunpoint. I dared not move anymore. They forced me into the car. I saw there were four people all armed with guns in the car.”
The car drove on for some time before he was hustled into another car.
“In that car, they grabbed my cellphone and checked it. They tried to communicate with me, but failed due to the language barrier. I told them I can’t speak Spanish, only know a bit English. I thought they wanted ransom because I heard words like ‘money,’ ‘bank.’
“They pulled up and changed cars again. This time, they pulled the hood of my jacket over my eyes. After the car stopped I was taken out of the car and I saw a house with more than 40 heavily armed gunmen inside.
“Then they took me to a room where a man was lying on a bed in a corner. There was a handgun on the quilt, and I suddenly realized he must be the gang leader. He asked me some questions but failed again, then he took my phone and browsed pictures and videos in the phone with other people. They began laughing at some showing local police and soldiers cheering or applauding during the run. I showed them some interesting videos and the tension in the room soon melted.”
On November 12 in Mexico, Bai poses for pictures before running on Highway 97. Bai later suffered a terrifying kidnap ordeal.
Bai shows his teammates the two bottles of beverage a gang leader gave him after setting him free.
One of the men managed to access translation software and, with its help, he understood the gang leader asking him whether he could do martial arts or karate.
“I said no, and pretended to be weak by saying I could only run though actually I had been practicing martial arts since childhood. Because I feared if I said yes, they would keep me to teach them martial arts or bind me at night to prevent me from escaping.”
He also asked why Bai was running there. Bai told him that he was a keen runner and wanted to take on a challenge of running from Antarctica to the Arctic.
“Finally he asked me whether I had relatives or friends here and where were they? They also asked me to call them. I tried to call Li Zhenyu, who is in charge of my backup team. The call failed because I forgot to add the country code, I tried again, but there was no answer. At this time, my phone alerted me that the battery was low. I showed them and asked them to charge it.”
The gang leader went out for about 10 minutes. When he came back, he returned the phone to Bai and got him into a car.
“I thought they would lock me up in another place, to my surprise, they dropped me on the highway where I had started to run that day, gave me two bottles of beverage and signaled me to continue to run. It was then I realized I had been set free.”
It was confirmed he was out of danger when he came across three police cars. Three hours had passed since he was kidnapped.
In Peru, when police found out he needed to go through a road tunnel, they closed it and let him through. “I almost burst into tears at that moment, because if I hadn't crossed the 3km tunnel, it would have meant a 50km detour,” Bai said.
His greatest concern on his run was always for his wife and new-born baby boy.
The original plan was for his wife to run with him for around the length of a marathon and do some logistics support every day. When she became pregnant, Bai still decided to do the run.
“It had been seven years since I had this idea. And everything was ready. If I had missed this timing, it’s likely I couldn't have done it.”
Bai said she supported his decision wholeheartedly. Their son was born while Bai was running in Peru, three months into the journey. Bai celebrated his arrival by running a longer distance that day. Though he had a video chat with the family almost every day, he felt guilty he was not with the baby and his mother.
“I was anxious to go back especially during the latter part of the course, I didn’t want to see him until he was already 1 year old. That’s why I ran about 270 kilometers in the last three days and flew back non-stop so that I could see my baby and wife as soon as possible.”
“Of course it’s a pity that my husband couldn’t be with me. Bu this run was important to him. I hoped he would finish it,” wife Chen Chunyan told CCTV in a recent interview, but she couldn’t hold back tears as she continued: “It’s just, just … too long, and I kind of missed him.”
Bai Bin pictured in the United States in April, 2019.
Talking about his future plans, Bai said: “I would try to reach the summit of Mount Everest from the base camp in 24 hours next year. And my biggest dream so far is running around the world. I will finish three journeys (from the Arctic Ocean to Xi’an, from Istanbul to Africa through Europe, and in Antarctica) to form an around-the-world run with two already completed — the Silk Road one and south to north one. And what’s next? My pursuit is limitless.”
Bai poses with a Jim Wells County sheriff in the US.
