Guo Chuan, 44, will be the only Chinese who returns home for the weeklong Spring Festival holiday on a racing boat. On January 18, Guo will board the Green Dragon, one of the seven racing boats in the ongoing Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 (VOR), heading for Qingdao, a coastal city in east China's Shandong Province, from Singapore. The scheduled time for his arrival is January 28, the third day of the Year of Ox.

The race, which started on October 11, 2008 in Alicante, Spain, has so far had three stopovers--Cape Town, South Africa; Cochin, India; and Singapore--in 74 days. Qingdao will be the fourth.

"Qingdao is my hometown. We'll stay there for about two weeks before heading for Rio de Janeiro," said Guo, the first Chinese to participate in the event. "This is the first time a Chinese city has been selected as a stopover in the VOR's 35-year history. I am truly proud.

"I expected a lot upon boarding and dreamed of going home as early as possible," he added. "It is hard to describe my feelings at the moment as we are approaching Qingdao."

Once in a lifetime

Guo Chuan, the first and only Chinese in the Volvo Ocean Race, onboard the Green Dragon racing boat as a media crewmember (COURTESY OF WANG DELU)

In fact, Guo's participation in the event was by accident. "Last summer, I was informed that the Green Dragon, jointly presented by Ireland and China, was recruiting a media crew for the VOR," Guo told Beijing Review. "I was excited because it had been my longtime dream to participate in the 10-month-long sailing marathon."

Guo immediately emailed a personal statement to Ian Walker, the boat's skipper, and was given a chance for trial training in Ireland a few days later. Fortunately, he passed the tests and stayed aboard.

The media crew, according to Guo, is responsible for covering life onboard during the race. He had uploaded 51 diaries and 78 photos to the Internet as of December 23, the day they arrived in Singapore.

"Waves, jolt, swing, humid and wet clothes, extreme temperatures--my working environment was much harder than I could tell," he said.

"This was a challenge for me, but just a small one; the biggest was how to become part of the team," said Guo, the only crewmember from a non-English speaking country.

"All my fellow crewmembers are professional sailors with impressive career records that include world championship titles, American Cup and VOR championships, and Olympic medals. I was the last to join the team and I felt like an outsider at first. Since the race started, we've talked about work and life, and sometimes made fun of one another; we've worked together to struggle through storms. I felt that I was part of the team and we became closer," he continued.