Invited by a pal, I embarked on a self-driving trip to Kweichow in mid-June. This is not my first time to Guizhou, but it is my first time to travel to Guizhou specially. Before this, I was not a massive fan of the scenery of Guizhou, but after my friend’s invitation, I scrolled through the social media and seeked the landscapes of Guizhou. What I am most interested in are the various stunning waterfalls and breathtaking caves.
I set out eastward on a windless morning, passing Suining and Tongnan, and arrived at my first stop, the municipality of Chongqing. It turned out that this route was not a good option. The high temperature in Chongqing made me feel that even my pores could not breathe, and even the wind was scorching.
After a short pause, I went on my trip to Zunyi. By the way, I took a passenger to Zunyi as a rideshare driver from a hospital in the Jiangjin District. I have to admit that this passenger is the most talkative passenger I have ever met. We have been chatting non-stop since I picked him up, and he was always the one finding topics. I understood that most local families burn coal for heating in winter, which was the most surprising thing.
When I arrived in Zunyi, the intoxicating evening breeze was already blowing. I parked my car on the side of the road and enjoyed this rare moment. Local residents were walking along the street, speaking a dialect that I could roughly understand. After I found a place to go in the evening on the hotel booking app, I ended the day’s trip.
The second morning looked like a normal start, I visited the Zunyi Conference Memorial Hall and a local snack street. The streets and roads there were very narrow, and driving there was challenging. Since I watched a few short videos about the monkeys of Qianling Mountain, I drove to Guiyang — the capital city of Kweichow in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the roads in Guiyang’s old city area are terrible, extremely narrow and full of potholes. I swear that I would never drive in Guiyang’s old city. But what most impressed me was the skyscrapers of Guiyang. They built a sea of super high resident apartments in Guiyang with high density, like the household renowned resident complex — Huaguoyuan, which has hundreds of high-rise resident blocks accommodate one-tenth of the residents of this metropolitan. When I drove through the Huaguoyuan area and passed the semi-underground viaduct, it felt like I was touring a giant underground palace. The viaduct pillars on both sides were as awe-inspiring as the Roman columns in the Greek palace, and the scene here seemed more sci-fi than the scene in Cyberpunk 2077.
It is worth mentioning that Guizhou’s food is really amazing. The seemingly ordinary pickled pepper, after being added to egg fried rice, seems to give this ordinary food a special soul. After being embellished with Guizhou’s pickled pepper, the fat, carbohydrates and protein give the taste buds a great enjoyment. Salty, fresh, fragrant and spicy are best integrated at this moment. I want to imitate Sa Beining’s tone and say: If you haven’t tried pickled pepper fried rice, you have lived in vain.
