Xinhua isn’t generally known for its heart-warming fuzzy stories, but China Hush has translated a cute tale of two “swarthy, ragged Chinese guys with half long hair” (half long hair?) who supposedly hitchhiked from Beijing to Berlin so that one of them could see his German girlfriend.

According to the article: “Two Beijing guys spent three-and-a-half months hitch-hiking over 160,000 km across 13 countries to see one of the guy’s girlfriend in Berlin, Germany. Altogether they took 88 hitch rides, including tricycle, tractor and carriage. Their journey was dubbed ‘the most romantic hitch-hike in history’ by netizens.”

160,000km? Now we all know Xinhua is a bastion of truth and integrity, but if the article is correct the pair’s journey was seriously circuitous. The distance from Beijing to Berlin as the crow flies is a little under 7,500 km. The circumference of the planet is only around 40,000 km – which means our swarthy lads did the equivalent of circling the globe four times. If they scored 88 separate rides, the average distance of each one must have been around 1,800 km. There are obviously some very generous drivers out there.

The article also blithely glosses over the difficulty of crossing the numerous borders between here and Europe: “Carrying super heavy packs, they convinced the visa officers of 12 countries by the purpose of backpacking travel.” I always suspected those stern-faced visa officers were romantics at heart.

Their journey took them across war-torn Iraq, although apparently the most eventful thing that happened to them there was hitching a ride on a tractor on its way to put out a village fire.

Even if the tale is a little tall in parts (or, dare we say, completely fabricated), the article is at least quite amusing, especially the description of the guys’ attempts to leave Beijing: “The most difficult ride is actually in China from Beijing to Hebei, according to Liu Chang who recalled that they waited in vain for over an hour in Hou Hai, nobody would stop to take them. Finally they got help from one driver who took them to the entrance of the highway leading to Hebei… They were asked to leave by some road maintenance workers, one of whom thoughtfully said: ‘Not many cars go to Berlin from here.’”

The original Chinese-language article can be found here.