Su Min (b. 1964), known as the "Road Trip Auntie", is one of China's most prominent feminist icons and influencers whose video diaries driving over 180,000 miles have inspired women to leave suffocating marriages and abusive relationships.^[1]

Her story has been made into a movie, Like a Rolling Stone, and seen her celebrated on BBC's 100 Women.

Su Min was born in 1964 in Changdu Xizang Autonomous region in Tibet where she lived until 1982.^[2] After that, Su Min spent most of her life in Zhengzou, Henan Province.^[1]

At 18, Su moved to Henan. She met her husband just a few times before marrying him.^[3] Other sources state it was at age 23, when Min had just graduated from college and under the expectation of her parents, she had met Du Zhoucheng through a blind date.

In order to "escape" the oppressive environment of her family where she had spent much of her life cooking and looking after her controlling father and her three younger brothers, Su Min still chose to marry Du Zhoucheng even though they had only met three times,.^[4][2]

Life after marriage was not as happy as Min would have hoped. She had not married for love but hoped that love would come.^[2] A daughter did come however, and for that reason alone she stayed and endured the abusive marriage. ^[2] Eventually, after her daughter had twins and made her a grandmother, Su Min fell into moderate depression.^[4] Du Zhoucheng regarded his wife's depression as a "disease-free moan". He scrutinized Min's spending, strictly restrained her actions, and even belittled her reputation in front of outsiders, saying that she was "mentally ill". ^[4]

Min's mother dissuaded her from getting a divorce leaving Min feeling hopeless. Su Min’s decision to drive away from her old life was fueled by a desperate need to escape her abusive marriage.^[5] She promised to help look after her grandchildren until they reached kindergarten but after that then she would have to leave.^[2]

"I felt if I didn't leave, I would get sicker....^[2] I was a traditional woman and I wanted to stay in my marriage for life... But eventually I saw that I got nothing in return for all my energy and effort - only beatings, violence, emotional abuse and gaslighting." - Su Min.^[2]

Having lived in Zhengzhou for most of her life, Min drove away from her marriage and family alone in the fall of 2020 - "escaping" from her husband, daughter, grandson.

Su Min set out from Henan and drove tens of thousands of kilometers to Hainan, passing through more than 230 cities in China.^[6] She had to live frugally on her pension so thought video blogs might help her raise some money but she had no idea that they would go viral.^[2] In the videos, she processes her past, sharing what she is cooking, where she is going to travel to next. When she visited a spice market, she would smell the chili peppers as, for her, the smell evokes "the smell of freedom" because throughout her marriage spicy food was forbidden by her husband who didn't like it.^[2]

"Her audience travels with her to places they never knew would long for - Xinjiang's snow-capped mountains, Yunnan's ancient river towns, sparkling blue lakes, vast grasslands, endless deserts. They applaud her bravery and envy the freedom she has embraced. They had rarely heard such a raw first-hand account about he reality of life as a Chinese auntie."^[2]

Although it is often hard to to get a divorce in China where many laws are in place to protect the family unit, Su Min said that when she finally filed for divorce she felt "another kind of freedom".^[2]

Her road trips since 2020 over 180,000 miles and her video diaries earned her "millions of cheerleaders online" and turned her into a "hero for women who felt trapped in their own lives."^[2]

In December 2024, Su Min was named in the BBC's 100 Women list of 100 inspiring women.^[2] Her story has also been made into a film, released in September 2024 and titled, Like a Rolling Stone.^[2]