With crowdfunded money, Zheng Shihao sees her dream of exploring Nepal come true. Photo: Courtesy of Zheng Shihao

 

Many college students and new graduates dream of traveling, sometimes to exotic and remote destinations but their dreams remain just dreams because they don't have the money to make them come true. Some students in Shanghai, however, are making their travel dreams come true by using crowdfunding.

The $5.3-billion crowdfunding industry has become popular in the West raising money from mainly small donations through the Internet to pay for projects, charities, sport, businesses or cultural events. In China now it is being used to help would-be travelers.

Zheng Shihao dreamed of exploring Nepal during her gap year and launched a crowdfunding campaign to achieve this. First, though, she removed her parents and family members from her WeChat "moments."

This turned out to be a very wise move. Her parents still don't know that she went to Nepal and they also missed out on the news that their daughter narrowly escaped death when she slipped and fell on a treacherous mountainside in Nepal. Her companion on the trek managed to pull her to safety just in time.

Her journey to Nepal was pure escapism, she said. Plagued with anxiety and depression in the middle of her gap year, before she considered an offer of study at the University of Southern California, Zheng simply wanted to escape her worries and flee reality. She also didn't want to concern her parents.

A platform for dreams

Dreamore.com is the platform that Zheng used to make her dream come true. Originally registered in Shanghai, Dreamore is now a business with 50 staff members. One of the original founders, Chen Weibang, told the Global Times that the average age of his staff was just 22. To date the website has launched more than 800 projects including some 100 crowdfunded travels. Du said most of the site's travelers were university students or new graduates who fancied a trip but didn't have the money.

Having stated her dream destination and explained how she wanted to enjoy a 15-day journey to Nepal and explore its beautiful mountains and villages, Zheng found to her surprise that she had been pledged 134 percent of her target of 6,000 yuan ($964.44) within 30 days, with 2,000 yuan more in hand.

To promote her project and attract people willing to offer money for it, Zheng set up different levels of rewards for different levels of funding. Ranging from a basic 9-yuan donation to a serious pledge of 5,999 yuan at the highest level, donors could expect to receive a thank you postcard, a bottle of melted snow collected from Mount Qomolangma (Mount Everest), a diary of the trip or photos and videos of the journey.

Her online plan for the trip showed that she would have to walk for an average of five hours every day. "The worst time was when I nearly got myself killed. That day I also got myself really lost and it took me eight hours to find my way back to where I wanted to be."

That same month, just a week after Zheng and her five traveling companions had returned to China, 32 travelers died in a snowstorm in the same area.

 "These are paths you can't wear high heels on. This is air you can't breathe properly if you have perfume on. And you don't meet anyone who works in an office," Zheng wrote in one of her e-mails to her backers after she returned to China.

Wang Xin (right) enjoys new experiences and friendships. Photo: Courtesy of Wang Xin

Sharing stories

Student Ma Xiaochen was one of the 20 people who paid for Zheng's trip. When asked how much money Ma had given Zheng to help her realize her dream, Ma said he had forgotten the precise amount. "But it was enough to help Zheng to return and tell me her stories."

In summer this year, in his gap year, Ma had gone to Tibet to expand his own horizons. Zheng's plans to explore Nepal struck a chord with him and when he saw that she would be spending two days in Tibet before traveling to Nepal, he tried desperately to join her at the last minute but had to abandon this because he didn't have a suitable visa.

These gap year students who dreamed of traveling then formed a close attachment, sharing their tales and adventures with each other. When he discovered he could not get to Nepal, Ma hitchhiked to Yunnan Province.

He told the Global Times he was thrilled at the way crowdfunding had introduced strangers to each other. "You never know what will happen or who you are going to meet.''

For Zheng and Ma, the crowdfunded travel experience has brought them new experiences and friendships. Not all dreams get to be achieved.

 Wang Xin is studying Arabic at the Shanghai International Studies University and sought crowdfunding for a 23-day trip to the Middle East. He didn't raise the money through crowdfunding although, eventually, his parents paid for his trip.

No harm

"There was no harm in trying," Wang said. He had wanted to raise 15,000 yuan to visit the United Arab Emirates, a journey he had dreamed of for some time. He placed his proposal on Dreamore.com but, lacking a good response, dropped his target to half of that figure.

In the end he was offered support from just nine people from around the country - and six of them were students. Most of the donors were offering less than 100 yuan but even on his cut-price proposal he would have still had to pick up postcards and souvenirs to reward them.

Dreamore's Du said his company considered a project successful if it had reached the online stage and was asking for funding - the implication being that to be regarded as successful by the company anything that was online was successful even if the project did not raise the targeted amount.

Wang got to fulfill his dream because his parents paid for the trip - although he had to travel on budget flights and share rooms in hostels.

Although it sounds a virtuous deed, paying money to help someone else enjoy a holiday, many of the sponsors want something in return. Dreamore charges 5 percent commission on the final amount that is raised. And it charges between 8 and 13 percent of the actual money collected for the proposals that don't meet the target.

A painting about Wang Xin's trip to the United Arab Emirates Photo: Courtesy of Wang Xin

Nothing left over

Donors can expect no return at all but often do insist on postcards, souvenirs or some such trivia to compensate them. Even though Wang didn't make his target, the money that was donated went to paying the website fees and buying souvenirs for his sponsors. "There was nothing left at all," he said.

Du, from Dreamore, said the company charges practically nothing for certain projects involving charities or some highly original schemes.

Having tasted the bitterness and sweetness of crowdfunded travel as a student himself, Du Mengjie set up Dreamore in 2012. Before that, in his student years, he had traveled via crowdfunding to India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Dubai and Bahrain. What moved him to do something for others was being in Afghanistan when a bomb went off in a nearby supermarket. "I wanted to do something meaningful and useful, otherwise I felt I would die a nobody."

Later his partner, Chen Weibang, invested 1 million yuan to launch the business. But it has not always been plain sailing. The firm has had troubles recruiting qualified staff and finding investors in Shanghai - in fact, the company relocated to Beijing a year after it opened, Chen said.

He said it appeared as though Shanghai was not a great environment for this sort of entrepreneurship. In Shanghai few graduates wanted to work for new and small companies but preferred to look for employment in large well-established companies. Job seekers in the online industry were more interested in working in finance and investment capital here was reserved for the finance industry over a crowdfunding website.

But now reestablished in Beijing, Chen said the company's outlook had greatly improved. "This is where China's Silicon Valley is located and the climate for online entrepreneurship is much better.''