Spring Break Road Trip to Luoyang

My kid got six days off for spring break, but I couldn’t snag any high-speed rail tickets, so we drove instead. I picked up the kid from school on Friday and headed north. Our route took us through Hanzhong, Xi’an, and Luoyang. Then we figured — since we were already in Henan, why not swing by Xuchang to check out Pangdonglai? On the way back to Chengdu, we passed through Xiangyang and Ankang. The entire trip covered roughly 2,500 kilometers.

Road trips have just one real advantage over train travel: freedom. Stop wherever you want. On day two, driving from Hanzhong to Luoyang, we spotted the Terracotta Warriors right off the highway. A quick right turn, a few extra kilometers, and we were off the expressway visiting the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor. At Sanmenxia, we stopped by the Yellow River for some photos. After visiting the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, my wife and kid were too sun-exhausted to move, so we cancelled the Shaolin Temple plan on the spot and headed straight to Xuchang to experience Pangdonglai. On the way home, we stumbled upon Xiangyang Ancient City and thought it looked great, so we stayed an extra day and flew Kongming lanterns by the ancient city wall at night.

For the past few years, our travels have been confined to areas south of Sichuan. The farthest north we’d been was Xi’an — we hadn’t really explored other parts of the north. So I’d always wanted to experience the vast North China Plain and soak in the northern atmosphere.

📷 Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang

📷 First time seeing the Yellow River. The opposite bank is Shanxi Province.

📷 Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang — the Vairocana Buddha

📷 White Horse Temple in Luoyang, the first Buddhist temple in the Central Plains

📷 Thai-style temple within White Horse Temple

📷 Luoyang Peonies

📷 Pangdonglai in Xuchang

Last year I really wanted to visit Pangdonglai in Xuchang, and this time it finally happened. The Pangdonglai at Xuchang Times Square might be the most popular location — but precisely because of that, the shopping experience wasn’t great. It was overwhelmingly crowded — not a place to stand, rivaling Sam’s Club before Spring Festival. Customers weren’t so much shopping as they were restocking wholesale. The store-brand dish soap, pastries, and meat sausages were being carted away by the load.

The product displays at Pangdonglai would cure anyone’s OCD — colors perfectly aligned, genuinely pleasing to the eye. Many of their private-label products, like face towels, soy sauce, and dish soap, are excellent quality at great prices — well worth buying.

What I think is truly distinctive is the deli section. The variety of prepared foods surpasses any supermarket I’ve ever visited. Not just the range, but the taste is fantastic too — our entire dinner was sorted by Pangdonglai. An 8.9 yuan braised sausage, one of which fills you up, with five flavors to choose from. A 19 yuan box of Liaoji’s Bobo Chicken, authentically delicious! Their in-house pastries are no worse than Holiland’s. If my family lived next to a Pangdonglai, we might never cook again — why not just treat it as our cafeteria?

Pangdonglai doesn’t just run supermarkets — they also operate jewelry stores, optical shops, and pharmacies. Every Pangdonglai supermarket is wildly successful. Their affordable, high-quality products and food are incredibly friendly to the people of Xuchang, but it’s been a disaster for other local businesses. Through exceptional service, supply chain mastery, and an employee stock ownership plan, Pangdonglai has taken its business model to the extreme — and other retailers simply can’t compete.

📷 Flying Kongming lanterns at Xiangyang Ancient City

Discovering Xiangyang Ancient City was an unexpected delight. Though it’s not as ancient as Langzhong or Lijiang — most of the buildings probably date to the 70s and 80s — it has a genuine lived-in atmosphere that other “ancient cities” lack. Wake up in the morning, have a bowl of Xiangyang beef noodles, drink some morning baijiu, stroll down to the city wall. In the evening, look up at the sky full of Kongming lanterns. It’s deeply romantic.