I wanted to lean over and check the date, but the driver's phone only showed the time. It was three in the morning, about as dark as it could get.
Aside from the light of the phone, the flashlight, and the headlights, there was no other light around.
There was no moonlight or starlight, and not the faintest sound.
The driver used his phone to pinpoint his location.
He was on Guangyuan Road.
I'd never heard of that road. There were plenty of places called Guangyuan across the country.
I still remembered seeing an educational post from a public account on social media. So many mountains, rivers, and roads had been named "Guangyuan" because, in ancient times, there had been a distinguished scholar from a prominent family named Guangyuan who loved traveling the land. Wherever he went, local officials treated him as an honored guest and invited him to tour the local mountains and rivers. The impressive part was that when ordinary people carved "I was here" into the walls or buildings at tourist attractions, they were damaging cultural relics. But when local officials invited him to leave his calligraphy and he wrote "I was here" and signed it, they could have it framed and hung at local landmarks. Naturally, none of his calligraphy survived, but the places where he'd left it gradually changed their names to "Guangyuan."
Most people didn't know this kind of anecdote. Those who did just thought it was amusing.
I only had a vague impression of it now. At the end of that long post, there'd been a list of mountains, rivers, roads, cities, and other places in China called Guangyuan. There must have been ten or twenty of them...
All I could do was remember the name Guangyuan Road.
If I couldn't deal with