The first time he went abroad was in 1989 when he and three colleagues stayed in a town near Lake Constance in southern Germany for a month doing work training. It was also the year the Berlin Wall came down.

They lived in homestays, and the locals took them to nearby border towns in Germany, Austria and Switzerland on weekends.

"At the time it was rare for Chinese to travel abroad, and that experience had a profound influence on me," Chen says.

"I realized how important it is to separate work from the rest of your life and decided then to take my son traveling somewhere at least once a year."

He and his wife started to travel with their son when the boy was only 4, the destinations including Malaysia and Thailand when the boy was 8.

Chen says travel has helped change his ideas about education, making him less of a disciplinarian when it comes to his son and schooling. He argues that children should do what they want to do, rather than what parents think is best for them.