If you are a college student and are interested in getting published with one of the finest
travel publications around, Nat
Geo Traveler has got a contest going that would be worth checking out.
The winner from last
year, I quote here to provide an example.
My first self-assigned mission in China was simple: Do something, some show of freedom and fun, a symbolic act, in
honor of the fallen Tiananmen students. As the guest of a knowledgeable American in Beijing, I had heard details
about their bravery in the face of impending doom as they called for greater freedoms.In honor of the students, I would throw a Frisbee across the square. I didn’t know how the guards would react. In
1989, students demanding more freedoms, including freedom of expression, were met with machine-gun fire there.
I arrived by overcrowded bus and stepped into the Beijing street. Tiananmen is designed to intimidate, and it
does; its enormity as the world’s largest public square, its forbidding walls, its brutal history.As I leaned over to pull the Frisbee from my bag, I felt the guard’s presence to my right. I stood slowly, first
noticing his shiny boots, then the tip of his rifle.I smiled. He didn’t. I slowly reached into the bag, removed the disc, and gently mimicked a throw to him. He looked
quizzically at his fellow guard, who was also holding an AK-47.As he turned back toward me, a sideways grin crossing his face, he shrugged his broad shoulders, strapped his rifle
to his back, and jogged away in anticipation of the throw.
With his partner at the ready, a finger near the trigger of his rifle, I let the disc fly. The guard leapt for the
catch, his green uniform tugging at its seams.He missed the catch, but he didn?t miss the point. We were two strangers from worlds apart taking a chance on one
another, each at risk in our own way. But we sensed then, if only for an instant, that the most rigid orders, the
most brutal history, cannot withstand the power of human connection and freedom, or the desire to have a bit of
fun.