Travel doesn't really have much meaning.

You spend thousands of dollars, take five days off, carry a backpack taller than yourself, and rush to a strange city.

You think you are going to purify your soul, but in the end, you're just queuing in another place.

After much effort, you squeeze into a popular little shop, the owner serves a bowl of noodles, you take a bite, and the taste is exactly the same as the one made by the chubby master downstairs.

You look out the window, and the locals rush by on shared bikes, their tired expressions mirroring yours as you squeeze into the subway for work every day.

At that moment, you realize that you're not here to find poetry and distant lands.

You've just changed locations, continuing to worry about why the hotel Wi-Fi is so slow and whether you need to wake up early tomorrow to grab a number.

You set off full of fatigue, only to return dragging an even more exhausted body.

Your suitcase is stuffed with souvenirs that are completely useless, your phone has eight hundred edited photos, but the void inside you hasn’t shrunk at all.

The so-called healing is not found in the mountains, rivers, and seas thousands of miles away.

It’s hidden in that bowl of steaming wontons downstairs, in that old song played on the radio during rush hour traffic, and in the smell of sunlight on the quilt on a weekend afternoon.

So, in the end, is it the scenery that deceives people, or do people always want to deceive themselves?