A polio patient's wheelchair Odyssey

Yin Xaoxing was struck with poliomyelitis when he was only eight months old; his legs eventually became completely paralyzed.

Here follows his main itinerary from 1992 to 2009:

Mount Hengshan in Hunan in 1992; Tanggula Mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in 1993; Badaling Great Wall in Beijing 1994; Mount Hengshan in Shanxi, Mount Huashan in Shaanxi, and Mount Huangshan in Anhui in 1995; Mount Songshan in Henan and Mount Taishan in Shandong in 1996; Macao in 1998; Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang in 1999; Lop Nor in Xinjiang in 2004; Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang and Tibet in 2006; Sanya in 2007; and Tibet in 2009.

During the Sanya trip, he even had a go at scuba diving.

Yin said one of the biggest challenges he ever encountered occurred when he was climbing the Tanggula Pass to enter Tibet on September 23, 1993. Several local government workers had warned him the route was unsafe, yet he insisted on heading into the vast expanses of white snow.

As expected, a strong wind arose and Yin and his wheelchair were blown off the road straight into a ditch.

It was freezing cold, with temperatures of 31 degrees below zero. Yin struggled desperately for three hours to recover before he was finally found and saved by a passing truck driver.

"The situation was so bad that I had given up all hope. I even wrote a farewell note," Yin recalled.

The driver was deeply moved by Yin's story and was willing to give him a lift. Yin politely declined his offer, saying, "I want to demonstrate the strength of the handicapped. I am sure I can do just as well as a man with a perfectly functioning body."

Yin finally crossed the 5,000-meter-high mountain pass that late afternoon, becoming the first wheelchair-bound person in the world ever to enter Tibet that way. The kind driver followed him illuminating the way with his truck's headlights.

Since 2009, Yin's trips have mainly focused on southwestern Chinese cities.

He has kept up with his writing for the past 20 years to record his experiences as well as fund his trips. He has written and published many works, including prose, poetry, novels and a biography, with the total number of characters now up in the millions.

At the same time, he has become involved in educational training and participated in various public welfare activities. So far, he has been involved in more than 1,800 lectures on how to be self-sufficient and how to cope with adversity.

"There is no end to learning and climbing," he explains and therefore his long-distance travels are bound to continue.

Currently, he's planning his sixth Tibetan trip.