The Road That Shouldn't Exist
There are roads built for traffic. There are roads built for survival. And then there is the Bing-Cha-Zuo — a track connecting Bingzhongluo to Zuogong through Chawalong, a road so marginal it exists only because a hydropower project deep in the mountains needed a supply line. Without that project, it would have been swallowed by the cliffs long ago.
We were not supposed to be on it.
The original plan was the Bing-Cha-Cha — the old National Highway 219, notorious enough in its own right. But the Yixiu La pass had taken a heavy snowfall overnight. The government had closed it. No timeline for reopening.
Two choices remained.
Turn back to Bingzhongluo and take the new 219 toward Shangri-La — safe, paved, unremarkable.
Or take the Bing-Cha-Zuo.
My two companions looked it up online. Forums, social media videos, travel blogs. Too dangerous, they said. Let's go back.
I looked it up too. Carefully. And I came to a different conclusion.
I have driven high-altitude mountain roads before. I know what a bad road looks like, and I know the difference between dangerous and impossible. This looked difficult. It did not look impossible.
We take the Bing-Cha-Zuo.
What makes this road more treacherous than the Bing-Cha-Cha is not age — it is indifference. The Bing-Cha-Cha, for all its disrepair, connects Chawalong Township to the outside world. Governments maintain what they must. But Chawalong and Bitu Township belong to different administrative regions with little reason to communicate. The road between them is nobody's priority. It is maintained just enough to keep the hydropower trucks moving, and not one meter more.
The reality matched the reputation.
For hours, the road was barely wide enough for one vehicle. When we met oncoming traffic — and we did — one of us had to reverse, sometimes for hundreds of meters, to find a passing point wide enough to squeeze through. Every reversal meant the cliff edge was somewhere behind you, and you could not always see exactly where.
There was one moment I will not describe in detail, because I did not capture it on video and words will not do it justice anyway. The dashcam was rolling, pointed forward, missing everything that mattered. What I can say is this: my left-side tires — both of them — had to hang half off the edge of the cliff to create enough room to pass. I felt the weight shift. I did not look down.
When we reached Bitu Township, I exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours.
When we finally pulled into Zuogong County at six in the evening, I stepped out of the car and noticed my right hand and right leg were trembling slightly. Not from fear — the danger was past. From exhaustion. A full day of maximum concentration, every muscle held at tension, had left my body with nowhere to put the energy. A mild cramp. The kind I had not felt in years.
We had made it.
The guqin rode the whole way in the back, secured and silent. I did not play that evening. Some days, arriving is enough.
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