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A retired railway worker in north China's Shanxi Province has recently started a 18-month hiking tour of the southern part of China.

Aged 74, Chen Fuqin took a train in early October to Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, where he would walk southward across the provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The hiking tour was his special way to welcome the upcoming 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Chen said.

Chen had been a soldier and fought in many battles in the 1940s,before he became a worker at the Taiyuan Railway Station.

In 1998, Chen went on his first hiking tour after retirement, and had walked over 13,000 kilometers across 13 provinces by October 2001.

In areas where no lodging was available, the retired man would suffer from cold and hunger, and sometimes even contempt for his dirty clothes and haggard face.

But Chen said all these were nothing compared with the beautiful scenery he enjoyed on the way.

Chen said he planned to take a train home at the end of the present tour next year, and march westward to Qinghai, Tibet and Xinjiang after a brief rest.

"As long as I'm strong enough to move along, I'll walk to every corner of the country," he said.