In the folds of clouds and city, encountering the warmth of a hundred thousand human lives

When the car turned onto the mountain road, the wind suddenly changed its mood—leaving the warmth of the city streets, the coolness wrapped in pine needles slipped through the car window cracks. The mountains of Huize looked like a wrinkled green carpet, the road was the thread sewn into the carpet, and we climbed along the thread into the clouds. The buildings in the rearview mirror gradually lowered, finally shrinking into scattered building blocks laid in the mountain hollow. The wind farm halfway up the mountain was an unexpected bonus: the wind turbine blades cut through the clouds, breaking the light into flickering fragments. The asphalt road, wet with mist, shone like a ribbon torn from the clouds. Further up, the leaves turned light brown, and the wind rolled fallen leaves across the road, crushing the autumn feeling into fine pieces. When the navigation announced "You have arrived," we were standing on the ribs of the clouds—beneath us were deep green forests, before us was the spread-out city. In the near view were the high-rises of the new district, their creamy yellow walls glowing warmly in the sunlight. A local companion said that this area houses 100,000 relocated residents from poverty alleviation; their former scattered mountain homes have now become windows lit up in these buildings. The wind carried distant voices—faint calls from the vegetable market, the sound of clotheslines swaying—one hundred thousand days stacked together, turning "a foreign land" into "home." Looking farther, the old district’s tiled roofs crowded with brick buildings resembled an old painting creased by time, and on the mountain peak beyond, the Wenbi Tower stood like a vertical period. This tower is an old friend of Huize, standing here since the Ming and Qing dynasties, watching the city in the mountain hollow grow from stone slab roads to asphalt roads, watching the copper-carrying mule caravans replaced by logistics trucks. Now it stands above the clouds, writing the word "cultural heritage" in the wind. Squatting down to shoot the distant view, pine needles fell on the lens—it turns out the mountain was watching us too. This day seemed to unfold Huize into several pages: the foot of the mountain was the steaming life of daily living, the mid-mountain was the romance of wind and clouds, the mountain top was the gaze between city and people. As we descended, the sky darkened, and the lights of the new district lit up one by one. The light from a hundred thousand windows was warmer than the stars. Huize is never a trendy tourist spot; it is a city that blends "life" and "scenery" together—the mountain you climb is the backdrop of residents’ daily lives; the tower you see is their casual talk over tea; the hundred thousand lights in your lens are real, tangible days. Next time you come to Huize, don’t just visit the old street. Drive up the mountain, wait for the wind to blow the clouds away, and you will see: the city is in the folds of the mountain, the people are in the city’s warmth, and we are all in the tenderness of this world. Huize Ancient Town