At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Ma Xuanjun and his wife were taking out a bowl of roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes from the stove. "It's home-grown, try it, it's original."
Sitting on the balcony of the farmhouse, you can look up and see the First Bridge of Beipanjiang River spanning both sides of the river. The bridge deck is 565.4 meters away from the river. When it was opened to traffic at the end of 2016, it was certified by the Guinness World Records and was called the "highest bridge in the world."
Today, this bridge has brought Ma Xuanjun an income that he never dreamed of back then: the farmhouse’s annual gross income is 20 to 300,000 yuan, and its guests come from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, Israel, Lebanon, the United States and other countries.
But before the bridge was built, what he remembered most was a different scene. Longjing Community is located at the junction of Yunnan and Guizhou, separated by deep canyons and rapid rivers on both sides. Yunnan is right across the road, you can see it and call it, but if you really want to go there, you have to climb over mountains and ridges, and it takes several hours to get there.
"Before, when we were poor, not only was transportation inconvenient, let alone the willingness of people to marry in," Ma Xuanjun said.
In 2015, Ma Xuanjun saw two huge pillars gradually being erected on both sides of the canyon and steel bars being rolled out one by one, and then he realized that a bridge was going to be built here.
He also began to plan his new life. With more than 90,000 bricks and more than 100 tons of cement, he built the new house shovel by shovel, which took three years.
"The bridge took four years to build, and my house took three years to build." In 2018, "Xiao Ma Ge Farmhouse under the Bridge" officially opened. The tourists arrived faster than he expected. Some people come specifically to see the bridge, some come to the canyon to play in the water, and some just want to live under the bridge for a few days and taste the local potatoes and sweet potatoes. Since there are not enough rooms in the peak season, he recommends guests to his brother's house and B&Bs in the town.
“Everyone makes money when they have money, and everyone does things together when they have something to do.” He said that when the business gets busy, he will ask three to five local people to help and pay him a salary of 100 yuan to 200 yuan a day. The remote mountain areas that few people were willing to enter now have tourists, businesses and more employment opportunities.
Ma Xuanjun also discovered that changes did not only occur in Guizhou. In the past, there were almost no tourism businesses on the Yunnan side. Nowadays, farmhouses and B&Bs have been opened one after another. Along the canyon, there are more and more houses on both sides.
From facing each other across the river to jointly operating, this bridge has made the two places that were originally relatively independent begin to have a closer connection.
Now that the bridge is open, it's not just how tourists come that will change. The drive from Xuanwei to Shuicheng has been shortened from more than four hours in the past to about one hour. Inter-provincial travel that originally required climbing over mountains and ridges has become a smooth journey along bridges and highways.
For the tourism industry, the bridge makes it easier for tourists to reach; for merchants and enterprises along the route, the bridge means a larger market. According to monitoring by the Liupanshui City Culture and Tourism Department, after the opening of the bridge, the proportion of tourists from Yunnan has increased year by year, and Yunnan has become an important source of tourists from outside the province in Liupanshui City.
In 2024, Liupanshui will establish the "Yunnan-Guizhou Five Cities" regional cultural tourism alliance with Qianxinan Prefecture, Yunnan Qujing, Zhaotong, and Wenshan, and inter-provincial tourism routes will further connect the landscapes on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Changes are also happening on freight lines. A truck driver made some calculations: In the past, he could earn up to 800 yuan for a round trip, and he also had to bear the cost of food and accommodation; now, the income per trip can reach about 2,000 yuan, and transportation costs have been significantly reduced.
Merchants in Qujing Agricultural Products International Trade City have also felt the changes. "The number of merchants coming from Shuicheng has increased by 80% compared with the past."
Even the path of products to the international market has changed as a result. Soybean oil produced by a company in Liupanshui was transported to the Yunnan port via the Beipanjiang Bridge for export to Myanmar, achieving a breakthrough in local exports of this product.
A bridge connects more than just the two sides of the canyon. Tourists come, merchants come and go, and goods travel further. Areas that were once isolated by mountains and rivers began to form new economic connections in the transportation network.
The changes in Beipanjiang Bridge are just a microcosm of Guizhou’s transportation development. For a long time, high mountains and deep valleys have been a difficult problem that Guizhou’s transportation construction must face.
In 2015, Guizhou took the lead in realizing county-level expressway connectivity in the western region. By the end of 2025, the province's highway mileage will reach 9,560 kilometers, and more than 32,000 bridges are distributed among the mountains. Highways and bridges will connect places that were once difficult to reach.
For Liupanshui, improved transportation not only shortens travel time, but also expands urban development space.
Ma Xuanjun is a witness to this change.
Now, not only can he run a farmhouse, he has also learned to post on WeChat Moments and use a drone to take pictures of the bridge. He takes tourists to see Fairy Cave, Zuotian Cave, Fairy Stone and waterfalls in the canyon for free, hoping to introduce more unknown scenery in his hometown.
Once upon a time, he stood on this side of the canyon and could see the other side, but it would take him several hours to reach it. Now, he stands under the bridge, greeting guests coming from the other side and from further afield.
Looking back at the changes over the years, Ma Xuanjun said with emotion: "From no bridges to bridges, from small bridges to big bridges, to high bridges, you can feel the development of our country in recent years."
For Liupanshui, the traffic change is not just about building roads to the other side of the mountain, but also allowing people in the mountains to go out and people from outside to come in, allowing life, industry and markets that were once separated by mountains and rivers to truly connect together.
Tianyan News reporters Zhou Ziyan and Zhao Zheming
