This is peak-hour traffic of a kind not found in Hong Kong. There are cars aplenty but they're bumper to bumper with motorcycles, water buffalo, hand-pulled carts, rusty bicycles and other ancient vehicles that still pass as transport in rural China.
On the pavement, scrawny chickens dart about anxiously and mangy dogs scrap in mock combat. Amid plumes of sunlit dust, children chase each other through market stalls while the womenfolk huddle together, animated in conversation.
Road trips might not be everybody's cup of puer tea but you've little choice if you want to sidestep the mainland's big cities and tourist routes to visit more remote regions. A good guide and a Global Positioning System (GPS) device make such a trip possible.
Among the five of us squeezed into a four-wheel-drive on a two-week road trip of about 4,000 kilometres is our guide, Peter Schindler, a racing-car driver who has turned his passion for switchbacks into a self-drive touring business, On the Road in China. We're exploring Sichuan and Yunnan, heading south from Chengdu, to the Myanmese border and on to Kunming. Schindler is using the trip to scout for hotels and restaurants, measure distances and log GPS co-ordinates for clients who will get behind the wheel themselves - although they will have the support of a lead car and guide.
Driving through these provinces would be almost impossible for an outsider without such support. For foreigners, renting a car in the mainland is a process dogged by bureaucracy. Once on the road, orientation is a problem. Apart from the language barrier, the national road atlas is a collation of provincial maps that do not conform to scale. Following a road from one page to the next requires the patience of a Buddhist monk. The maps aren't necessarily accur- ate either. Some highways, marked clearly on the page, have not yet been built. Schindler aims to help travellers overcome such difficulties so they can enjoy the freedom and adventure of the road.
And what a ride it is. Southwest China has some of the country's most awe-inspiring scenery, with an equal mix of dirt road and smooth bitumen well suited to touring. Sichuan, on the edge of the Great Tibetan Plateau, is mountainous and green and the roads duck and dive over steep passes, through rocky gorges and along the gushing red rivers.