I Am 41 Years Old and Have Started Living in a Slide-in Camper for More Than 2,000 Days

Tags: Slide-in Camper, Camper Van Life, Camper Van Travel Notes, True Sharing, Self-driving Travel Notes

My name is Xiaoli, and I am from Heilongjiang. I became envious after watching videos of slide-in camper travels online and began researching slide-in campers. Over three years, I bought five slide-in campers.

At first, I didn’t want to go home after work and lived in the slide-in camper instead; later, people joked that I was a "lighthouse keeper". My persistent and firm love for slide-in campers allowed me to become a professional in the slide-in camper industry. Up to now, my wife and I have lived in slide-in campers for more than 1,170 days. Slide-in camper life has brought us a brand-new experience and made our lives more colorful.

I am both a seller and a seasoned player of slide-in campers. Now, I am preparing a slide-in camper campsite. I hope to do my bit to solve the pain points of slide-in camper users, such as difficulty in parking and replenishing supplies, and add fuel to the slide-in camper community and industry.

I was born in Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province. When I was a child, my parents were ordinary employees in the forestry area, and my family was not well-off. At the end of 1995, after graduating from high school, I was drafted into the army and served in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province. After being demobilized from the army, I returned to my hometown Yichun and worked in a company selling decoration materials. With a monthly salary of 1,800 yuan, it was a decent income at that time, and the work was not intensive. I worked there for eight years. I got married to my wife in 2002. She is two years younger than me. We were neighbors since childhood and worked in the same city back then, so our relationship developed smoothly. In the first few years after marriage, we didn’t live a wealthy life, but our relationship was very stable. Soon after marriage, my wife gave birth to our son. In 2006, I quit my job at the decoration material company and moved to Weihai, Shandong with my wife. Here, relying on my years of work experience, I opened my own store specializing in selling decoration materials, while my wife rented a small shop to run a catering business. We went our separate ways and started our businesses.

In the first few years, my decoration material store did well. My wife’s catering business also grew bigger and bigger, with more and more stores. However, from beginning to end, no matter whose business was good or bad, we ran our own businesses separately without interfering with each other. After living in Weihai for a few years, we were satisfied with the environment, climate and other aspects here, plus our businesses were here. In 2011, we bought a house in Weihai and officially settled here.

One day, I accidentally came across a video of slide-in camper travels. Seeing people driving slide-in campers to travel around, I secretly envied them. After that, I became obsessed and often searched and watched such videos about slide-in camper travels online. I immediately fell in love with slide-in campers and the lifestyle of traveling with them. During that time, I kept paying attention to slide-in campers and thought every day about how to buy one and how to travel with it after buying it. I tried to find a breakthrough to enter the slide-in camper field as soon as possible. I didn’t have a slide-in camper and researched for almost a year. Finally, in August 2019, I bought my first slide-in camper.

After buying the slide-in camper, I wanted to rent it out while traveling to earn some living expenses. However, few people rented slide-in campers at that time—only a few times a year—so I could only explore and use it by myself. At that time, I parked the slide-in camper at the entrance of the restaurant. Since the restaurant closed late, it snowed outside sometimes, and after drinking a little, I didn’t want to travel back and forth, so my wife and I lived in the slide-in camper. After living there for a while, both of us felt it was quite nice to live in a slide-in camper—the bed was spacious and comfortable to sleep in. Since then, my wife and I have been living in slide-in campers all year round. As far as I know, so far, we should be the only people in the country who live in slide-in campers all year round.

When it got hot in summer, whenever we didn’t go to work or go out, we parked the slide-in camper near the lighthouse by the sea. Because it was quiet there, the air was fresh, and the scenery was beautiful. Over time, we became famous in Weihai and were jokingly called "lighthouse keepers" by the locals.

In the first two years after getting into slide-in campers, I occasionally took time to travel. During that time, I met many fellow campers and gained a deeper understanding of slide-in campers. During this year’s May Day holiday, my wife and I made an appointment with three other fellow campers from other places to drive their slide-in campers for a long trip. We, together with campers from Henan and Sichuan, first went to Hebei as the first stop, then met up with Inner Mongolia campers in Ulanhot. After the meeting, we set off together from Inner Mongolia, passing through Xinjiang and Xizang, and finally arrived in Yunnan. We planned to spend the Spring Festival in Yunnan before returning, which was expected to take a year. Along the way, we enjoyed many beautiful sceneries.

We parked the camper on the grassland next to the yurt. Opening the car window and looking out, white clouds floated in the blue sky, occasionally one or two birds glided across the sky, and a green ocean danced with the wind... The picturesque scenery was all in sight, and the feeling of being there was really comfortable. We lived by the bank of Barkol Salt Lake. Stepping out of the car, the mirror-like lake merged our reflections with the sky, as if we were in the sky. Of course, we also encountered many small troubles on the way. For example, I lost my drone while playing by the Tao'er River in Inner Mongolia. We stayed in Inner Mongolia for about a month and a half, and in mid-July, we arrived at Qaxi Grassland in Xinjiang. We parked the four slide-in campers in different directions, leaving an open space in the middle to form a small slide-in camper courtyard.

I went to Nanjing to pick up my fifth slide-in camper and stayed at my friend’s place for about another week. Then we ended the trip and went back to our respective homes. Although the trip was not completed and we encountered various troubles on the way, this slide-in camper trip deepened my love for slide-in campers even more. Looking back on that time, we could live by the river, on the grassland, by the lake... in all kinds of different places. Every morning when I woke up, there was always a different fresh scenery in front of me. It was as if I had a movable home. This kind of life cannot be achieved by any other type of vehicle—only a slide-in camper can. However, there are joys as well as pain points. In my opinion, the biggest pain point of slide-in campers in China at present is the lack of campsites.

Many fellow slide-in camper users find it really difficult to find a place to replenish water and charge when traveling out—there is nowhere to spend money even if they want to. I deeply felt this through this group trip to the northwest in slide-in campers. Moreover, many places are becoming more and more strictly regulated now.

So far, I have lived in slide-in campers for more than 2,000 days. I really enjoy living in slide-in campers and don’t want to go home. Because when I get home, I don’t know what to do instead. As long as my health permits, I will continue to live in the slide-in camper and have no plan to return to urban apartments.

Because a slide-in camper itself is a home, a movable home. Life in a slide-in camper is an experience of "the scenery changes, but the home remains the same", and I really enjoy this feeling. Over the past few years, we have changed five slide-in campers. Through these years of experience, I have felt the beauty of slide-in camper life. At the same time, I have also seen its various shortcomings. I will not judge too much whether slide-in campers and slide-in camper life are good or bad. However, I will communicate with people who like slide-in campers and are interested in slide-in camper life with my more than 2,000 days of living experience, and present the true appearance of slide-in camper life with a realistic attitude.

Slide-in camper life is a concept and attitude towards life, a lifestyle completely different from that in concrete buildings. It is not suitable for everyone, but if you are really suitable for it, you will fall in love with this kind of life.

Life is full of infinite possibilities, which will not be lost because of identity, status or age. I started to get in touch with slide-in campers at the age of 40, and only got my first slide-in camper and started living in it for more than 2,000 days at the age of 41.