Freegans adopt a minimalist lifestyle to help protect the health of the environment. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A life-changing trip

Born to a modest family in a small town of Southwest China's Guizhou province, Ding found a passion for painting at a young age. After graduation with an associate degree in animation from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2002, she worked as a comic strip artist in Shanghai. Later, however, in her 20s, her career hit a bottleneck, and she succumbed to depression.

To find a way out, she drafted her "bucket list", filling an A4-sized sheet of paper. Ding quit her job and discarded many of her material possessions. With just a 15-kilogram backpack and a bank card with 100,000 yuan at her disposal, she embarked on an overseas trip.

Naturally for an art major her first destination was Europe, with Italy being her first stop.

She met a very hospitable and caring woman in her 60s who runs a homestay in Rome, where Ding stayed for a few nights.

"Each evening, I returned to the homestay like a tired dog and fell asleep in an instant, but the next morning, I was surprised to find my pair of socks and my underwear washed and dried-the old lady helped me to clean them, saying that I needed to do more important things," Ding recalls. "At that very moment I felt so touched and had this revelation: I was cared about and my life was cherished. There's no reason I should waste it."

After the one-month trip, her depression lifted, and she found another change in herself. "I desired little in the way of material possessions," Ding says.

For six years starting in 2009, Ding did not spend a penny on housing. When she worked as a game artist for Kingsoft in Beijing from 2008 to 2010, she lived in the office. With a canteen and bathroom, it was a simple life, but Ding was happy.

As she continued to accumulate money, Ding spent it on delicious food and travel. In 2012, she and a friend toured Southeast Asia, visiting five countries. She learned open-water diving in Semporna, Malaysia, and this gave her a precious insight into nature. "When diving to a depth of 40 meters, I realized how small we humans are," she recalls, adding that a life should not be merely judged by the accumulation of material things, money and property.

Anchor Lee, a colleague of Ding, comments online on her LinkedIn profile: "To many women her age, the dream of traveling around the world is just a dream, but Mantis (Ding's English name) has already done it, step by step. This is rare; it also explains her temperament: brave and tough."