Forrest Gump IRL of the Day: Catherine Li, who emigrated to America from China ten years ago, has been walking around the country for the past seven months just for the hell of it.
Her cross-country saunter started in Daly City, near San Francisco. Armed with a few dozen pages of Google Maps printouts and whatever was in her savings account, Li started walking toward New York City.
“People always ask me that,” she told the Courier Times, referring to the question “why?” “At first, I was so urgent (to respond) so I just started to tell them all the feelings I was having but I realized that was tough to do. So I just boil it down to the short version: I just felt like walking. I just decided to click over to living in the actual moment instead of inventing all these fantastic fantasies for the future.”
Li has been helped along the way by strangers who have provided her with gift cards and money and invited her into their homes to crash on their couch. Some people haven’t been as kind: Li says she’s been called a bum and a crazy person, but she let’s it roll right off her shoulders.
“It’s all right,” she says. “People are different and sometimes, it’s hard to comprehend when you first encounter something out of the norm.”
[couriertimes.]
