The driver's seat of the large truck was occupied by a man in his forties, with a scruffy beard and wearing a shiny leather jacket. Beside him sat a small child wearing a yellow duckbill cap, no more than ten years old.
"Dad, where are we going?"
"Shut up."
The child in the passenger seat shrank his neck and lowered his head in silence.
Between the dull yellow and dark black mountains, a pale winding mountain road stretched intertwined. A somewhat old Dongfeng Tianlong truck struggled to make its way through the mountains. This was the Sichuan-Tibet Southern Route, known as the Nujiang 72 Turns. It was among the country's most challenging roads, cutting straight through Yela Mountain and leading to the Nujiang Grand Canyon, bordering the China-Myanmar frontier.
The man steered the wheel with one hand while holding a phone in the other, negotiating fervently in Mandarin mixed with half-baked Burmese with someone on the other end of the line.
