“读万卷书，行万里路”，这句话用在杭州女孩吴亦婷身上再合适不过了。

        这个15岁的女孩，目前已经周游了20多个国家。当她现身《最强大脑之燃烧吧大脑》第二季的节目里时，连主持人蒋昌建都夸赞“这么小的年纪就已经游历了20多个国家，厉害”。

        虽然她没有晋级比赛，但在节目播出后，她身上多了个“小小旅行家”的标签，引起不少人关注。毕竟，能站到这个“最强大脑”这个擂台上的都是强者，哪怕已经出局。

        《最强大脑之燃烧吧大脑》（以下简称《最强大脑》）是江苏卫视推出的一档大型脑力偶像竞技真人秀。吴亦婷是今年参加《最强大脑》的唯一杭州人，这是一个文静的姑娘，戴着眼镜，个子要比同龄女孩的高。

        对于玩和学习这件事，吴亦婷表示，“每个假期都在玩玩玩”“一不小心混进了‘最强大脑’”。听起来，这就是传说中的“别人家的优秀孩子”。

        节目现场的很多细节，吴亦婷都有些记不清了，她似乎对这场全国“顶尖大脑”的较量不怎么上心。这场短暂的旅程对她来说，真的就只是一时兴起——因为自己崇拜的偶像（《最强大脑》往期选手张梦南）曾经在这个舞台上发光发热，她也想去试试，就这么简单。

        对于“小小旅行家”这个标签，她似乎也不那么在意。“年纪小的时候嘛，也不会说喜欢出去或者不喜欢出去，爸妈出国了就带上我一起。”

        说起校园生活，吴亦婷说自己只是个普普通通的女生：“我喜欢的东西挺多的，但都谈不上热爱。兴趣来了就去玩一玩，没兴趣了就放在一边。”

        她笑称自己也做过别人眼中“无聊”的事，比如设计过一个提醒装置。那时候有寝室自习，学校规定不能在自习的时候看规定书目以外的书。为了防止被老师查到，她最后设计出一个装置，当有人推寝室门的时候，各种机关咔咔运作，就会提醒大家注意。

        当然，这个小装置也是出于好玩，吴亦婷说自己就像在耍小女孩的小心思，“其实并没有防到老师，因为老师不怎么来我们寝室，来的多是同学……”事实上，吴亦婷和老师关系还挺不错。

        听得出，她对这个世界抱有自己的思考和认知，而不是随大流。这也是她父亲希望看到的。这位从事高校教育工作的父亲对女儿学习的唯一要求是，希望她拥有独立思考的能力。他认为，在孩子的童年树立条条框框未必是好事。对于他的女儿来说，想成为什么样的人，应该是吴亦婷自己去思考的事，而不是爸妈的事。

        正如吴亦婷自己说的，只要一有空，父母就会带她去领略满世界的风土人情，见识世间万物的千姿百态。

        这一家子在出国旅游前通常都会收集信息，制定浏览线路和攻略。吴亦婷还会专门阅读一些相关的书籍，比如，去英国前看儿童版的《莎士比亚全集》，去法国前读一读卢浮宫馆藏精品相关资料。

        美国、英国、法国、澳大利亚、新西兰、日本、泰国、俄罗斯、意大利、奥地利、瑞士、瑞典、芬兰、挪威、荷兰、摩纳哥……这些地方都已经留下了吴亦婷的足迹。

        与许多人出去玩偏爱自驾不同，吴亦婷更喜欢选择当地的公共交通，因为这样可以贴近和体验当地的风土人情。

        博物馆、艺术馆这样的人文景点，是一家子最常去的地方。比如，在英国伦敦，他们专门花了近两天的时间游览了大英博物馆和自然博物馆；在西雅图，他们花了两三天的时间游览天平洋科学中心、音乐体验馆和波音飞机厂；波士顿科技馆、卡尔加里历史遗产公园、温哥华人类学博物馆等等这些地方都有他们的身影。

        环游世界的经历，也给了吴亦婷自己的体会和思考。

        她说起曾经在瑞士卢加诺国家公园偶遇一位老婆婆，通过交谈得知，40年来，凡是晴天，老婆婆都会准时在那张临湖的长椅上守候夕阳西下。虽然不知道背后具体的故事，但老婆婆的那份坚持和浪漫至今让吴亦婷难忘。

        日本街头的整洁也给吴亦婷留下深刻印象。她说，即使在迪斯尼乐园人口那么密集的地方，人群散去之后，地面也几乎找不到一丁点儿垃圾。

        入住新西兰南岛的一家农庄时，吴亦婷第一次看到牧羊犬圈赶几百头小羊，“那种壮观的景象，没法用言语形容”。

        而在挪威的一座小岛上，吴亦婷则有了写诗的冲动，“夕阳西下的唯美时刻，每走一步都能看见从草丛里飞散出一些小小的飞蛾来。我觉得自己就像是在童话世界。”

        “国外旅行的过程中，我体会到不同的文化带来不同的风土人情。”显然，这个15岁的小女孩已经在游历的过程中有自己的想法。

        “当然，相比之下，我还是更喜欢中国文化，更喜欢杭州，喜欢她的美食、喜欢她的安全感、喜欢她的美丽，喜欢这个城市中我的那些亲朋好友。”

15-Year-Old Girl’s World Tour

In ancient China, many scholars pursued a lifetime goal of reading 10,000 books and traveling 10,000 miles. For these ancients, traveling to see the real world was as important as reading books to understand the world. The idea has been kept much alive in Chinese culture. The 15-year-old girl Wu Yiting in Hangzhou has been following the steps of these ancients. So far, she has visited more than 20 countries including the USA, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Monaco. She has been traveling with her parents since she was very young.

She caught the eyes of many people early this year because she competed successfully to appear in the 2019 season of Super Brain, a blockbuster reality show produced and aired by Jiangsu Satellite TV. This year, she was the only one from Hangzhou who passed all the preliminary stages to enter the final 100. She decided to take part in the program on the impulse largely because of Zhang Mengnan who had appeared in a previous season of Super Brain. She thought Zhang was cool and became his fan. So she tried to take part in the show. She did not care very much about winning or losing in the brutal competition. She just wanted to have that experience. She doesn’t know exactly how she qualified in the first place. Qualifying itself indicates that she is really a brainy girl. After all, she managed to make it into the top 100 out of over 120,000 candidates who participated in the preliminary audition.

But Wu does not think she has a super brain. She thinks she is just ordinary when it comes to her school life. She loves to take part in many kinds of activities on the campus, but she doesn’t have a passion for any one of them. Once she designed an alert gadget on the dorm door so that she could have time to hide away a book she read if a teacher came to visit. The gadget worked, but teachers didn’t visit her dorm.

She observes the world and does her thinking independently. And that is a quality her father wishes to see in her. Working at a university, her father hopes she grows up with an independent mind. Setting so many rules and guidelines may not work at all, he says. And the parents believe that she must decide what kind of person she wants to be after she grows up. Such a big thing should not be their decision, they believe.

Traveling around the world helps her grow. The girl and her parents travel to educate themselves and broaden their vision and perspectives. They choose not to drive while traveling in foreign countries. They prefer taking public transport so that they can get exposed to local people and things more closely. Museums and galleries are their favorite destinations. For example, they spent two days visiting the British Museum and Natural History Museum while they were in London.

The experiences have given her the stuff for thought. One of the persons she remembers clearly was an old woman she met in a national park in Switzerland. She learned the old woman came to sit on a lakeside bench to watch sunset whenever it was fine and the old woman had done so for more than 40 years. The young girl didn’t get to find out why, but she was moved by this experience. Wu was also deeply impressed by the tidiness of streets in Japan. One of the most spectacular scenes she saw on her overseas visits occurred on a farm in New Zealand. She saw several sheepdogs herding a large flock of sheep. “The spectacular scene is beyond words,” the girl notes. While on a small island in Norway, she witnessed a sunset moment while taking a stroll. Her footsteps disturbed some butterflies which fluttered their wings out of grasses. That moment made her feel as if she had been in a fairyland.

“Traveling overseas allows me to experience different cultures and people,” confesses the 15-year-old girl, ”Chinese culture is dearest to me and Hangzhou is dearest to me because of its sense of safety, its beauty, and my friends and family in this city.”