Youyang Pengshui: The Ink and Wash Riverscape by the Wujiang River

📜 Past and Present
The water of the Wujiang River is a natural painter. Standing on the bluestone slabs of Gongtan Ancient Town, watching the emerald river wind between steep cliffs, it feels like an ink wash landscape painting slowly unfolding before your eyes. This is Youyang, this is Pengshui, and above all, it is the secret riverscape nurtured by the millennium-old Wujiang River. During the Spring and Autumn period, this area belonged to the Ba Kingdom; since the Tang and Song dynasties, it has become the golden waterway connecting Chongqing and Guizhou. The stilted buildings hanging on the cliff walls and the red lanterns swaying in the river breeze are all annotations written by time.

🏞️ Ink and Wash Scroll
1️⃣ Gongtan Ancient Town Wujiang Gallery
Address: Inside Gongtan Ancient Town Scenic Area, Provincial Road 304
At this moment, the ancient town is drizzled with fine rain, and the bluestone road shines like glazed pottery. Over 1,700 years ago, this place prospered due to salt transportation, and today it preserves the world’s longest cluster of Tujia stilted buildings. The best experience is to take a boat upstream, watching the cliffs on both sides carved like knife cuts, with mist wrapped around the mountainsides—like a real-life version of the famous Chinese painting "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains."

2️⃣ Chiyou Jiuli City
Address: By the Wujiang River, Dianshui Street, Pengshui (08:30-21:30｜￥81)
When night falls, Jiuli City transforms into a mythical world. This is the largest Miao ethnic architectural complex in the world, telling the epic of the Chiyou tribe with the 81-meter-high Jiuli Divine Pillar. Walking through the maze-like stilted buildings, you suddenly catch the aroma of camellia oil soup—turns out there’s an old teahouse hidden under the covered bridge around the corner. (Tip: On rainy days, be sure to try the Tujia green bean jelly, sprinkled with spicy pepper in hot soup, warming and refreshing.)

3️⃣ Wujiang Gallery (Monkey Mountain Tunnel｜09:00-17:30｜￥162)
It’s recommended to board the boat on a clear morning after rain. As the cruise passes through the most scenic section of the "Hundred Li Wujiang Gallery," you will understand what it means to "travel by boat on the river, and wander in a painting." Pay special attention to the faint ancient paths of the boatmen on the cliffs—the varying depths of the stone hollows are the life marks carved by boatmen with bamboo poles a hundred years ago.

🌧️ Notes in the Rain
Trapped under the eaves in Gongtan by a sudden rain, I found an unexpected joy: looking through the rain curtain at the stilted buildings on the opposite bank, it’s like viewing an ink wash painting through a layer of raw rice paper. The hot communal meal handed over by the old lady next door, mixed with the sound of rain hitting the Wujiang River, suddenly made me understand the artistic conception of "Border Town" in Shen Congwen’s writing.

The beauty here is like aged homemade wine to be savored slowly. While city dwellers rush to check in at trendy spots, the Wujiang River still maintains its most authentic appearance—the ultimate specimen of Chinese landscape painting and a living museum of Miao legends.

Post by ArcherBlazefire34 | Oct 24, 2025