Jesse Millett To Bike From Sea To Shining Sea With Chinese Friends This Summer
By Deb Alter
Jesse Millett of New Lebanon, New York and Kunming, China is about to head across the United States, joined by his good friend Jin Feibao and five companions from Kunming. On bicycles. The official title of the trip is “A Chinese Exploration of America’s History and Diversity: A Cross-Country Cycle Tour of the United States.”
[private] They arrived from Kunming in Boston on Monday, June 1, biked to Plymouth, Massachusetts, then to Amherst and Pittsfield and got to Jesse’s childhood home in New Lebanon on Sunday, June 6, where they were welcomed by the large Millett family with a very American barbeque.
Jin Feibao and Jesse are the expedition leaders. Other team members are Fei Xuan, a geological expert, Jin Feibiao, Feibao’s brother, an expert on sports and sports products, Yang Haidong, a professional journalist and photographer, and Dr. Li Pengfei, an orthopedist. They will be followed by car and trailer by Gary and Kathleen Millett, Jesse’s parents. (Unfortunetley, one of the team members, the only European on the trip, had to go back to Germany the day after their arrival due to an unexpected illness.)
On Monday, they geared up again and were off on their cross-country trek. Their first stop is Schenectady, Kunming’s sister city where they will receive recognition from Mayor McCarthy. Then it’s off to follow the historic Erie Canal and back onto the Yellowstone Trail to Chicago. From there they will ride their bikes across the famous Route 66 (sometimes called the “Main Street of America”) all the way out to Los Angeles. They estimate it will take 60 to 70 days to cover 13 states totaling approximately 3,418 miles. They will be blogging and posting photographs . You can follow their exploits at jmille03.blogspot.com.
So, how do a twenty-something from New Lebanon, New York, USA and a 52-year-old strategic planner from Kunming, China get to be such good friends, sharing adventures on different sides of the globe?
The story starts in 1945, when Jesse’s grandfather, Dr. Clinton Millett, (from Nebraska) was stationed in Kunming during World War II. His hobby was photography, and while there, he took many pictures of the people he met. Dr. Millett fell in love with the landscape surrounding Kunming and photographed the scenery and everyday lives of the Chinese people who befriended him. His images offer a rare glimpse of life in China before Communism.
After the war, the pictures sat in a closet. Everyone knew they were there, but no one really paid any attention. It turns out, however, that they were very important pictures-the first color photographs ever taken in China. (Color photography was not introduced in China until 1979.)
The people of Kunming had no idea that Dr. Millett’s photographs existed until 2004 when his son Gregg (Jesse’s uncle), a Niskayuna resident, visited there, retracing the places his father had photographed, and exhibiting the photographs. The response of the Chinese people was remarkable; when the pictures were first displayed in China, hundreds of thousands visited the exhibit. Dr. Millett’s original photographs were donated to the National Museum of Chinese History in Beijing in August 2005, in recognition of their importance to the Chinese people.
It was then, in 2004, just as Jesse was about to head off on a gap-year in South America, that his uncle invited him along. “There’s no way I could turn down an opportunity like that,” Jesse said, and he promptly traded in his ticket to South America for one to Kunming. And when he got to China he fell in love, “with the country, with the landscape, with the culture. I’d never experienced anything so different and so wonderful,” he explained. He knew he had to see more, know more, understand more about China. “I knew right away that this wasn’t going to be my only experience here.” Eventually, Kunming became his home away from home; he is now fluent in Chinese.
Jesse met Jin Feibao, co-leader of the current trip, as he was helping Gregg Millett to put together and promote the photo exhibition in China. It seems that it was an inevitable friendship. Jesse has always been an avid and active sports and outdoors lover. He’s been riding his bike on long trips and in competitions since he was a kid. In 2008 he worked for TeenTreks, a bicycle touring company that leads high school
students on self-sustaining treks for weeks throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Feibao is the most famous Chinese adventurer of modern times and “a huge inspiration in China,” according to Jesse. He has climbed the highest peak on every continent, run marathons on every continent, skied to the North and South Poles, traversed two deserts and Greenland, among other feats.
He and Jesse have led bike tours together throughout China and Southeast Asia, and now they are doing this one in the States. Jesse said that it was neither just his nor Feibao’s idea to do the USA trip, that they came up with the idea together, hinting that he “sort of planted the seed knowing Feibao would make it happen.” And Feibao is a man who knows how to make things happen. Ever since he was a young boy, his inspirations were dreamers and explorers like Jules Verne and Sir Edmund Hillary. “Realizing your dream is the hard part, the rest is just finding other people to share that dream and fund it for you!”
This is the first time Jesse is leading a trip across the United States. He thinks it will be different to share his native country with the Chinese team, instead of sharing his adopted country with Americans. “America has so much to offer, diverse cultures, many different landscapes and people with varied experiences all in one country,” he said. In addition, he hopes to “strengthen friendships, build cultural bridges and help develop understanding between the peoples of China and the United States.” They will be bringing letters of friendship from the people of Kunming to the places they visit here.
Jesse also thinks that bicycling is an excellent ecological alternative to Americans’ automobile culture. He hopes that this trip will help to promote bicycle tourism to Americans. (Jesse said that automobile drivers are not necessarily fans of bicyclists in this country and can sometimes be rude. He has warned his team to anticipate this.)
For his part, Feibao is “happy to do trips in other countries so that people don’t think that all Chinese men are businessmen. People think of China as a communist country, but it is one of the most capitalist places in the world. The Chinese people are very focused on money and possessions, but some of us are adventurers.” When he gets back to China, he tells his government about the amazing things he has seen, things like environmental protections, governments that support important infrastructures like roads and water supplies, and transportation. The Chinese government is supportive, he says, and although he travels as an individual, not as an official representative of China, what he does makes them look good. Of all the places he’s been, the most mind-blowing thing for him is the United States. “America has such a short history compared to China, India, and some of the European countries,” he said. “But in that short history, it has influenced the world so greatly.”
Jesse is fortunate to be able to combine his passion for China, travel, biking, and teaching through his work as On-Site Director of the Princeton (University) Bridge Year-China program which works in conjunction with an organization called Where There Be Dragons. Through those outlets he has been able to bring many (mostly) American students to China and other parts of Asia and share the cultures, traditions and people. As one of his students once remarked, “The world is so big, but it is also accessible.” [/private]