On 16 August 2026, Guizhou's first themed tourist train, Colorful Guizhou, begins service. Built by the Guizhou Tourism Group around a "rail plus mountain tourism" concept, the train is pitched as a moving city lounge for the province, a single corridor that packages the karst mountains, minority cultures, ecology and heritage of southwest China into one rail journey.
The "Six Scrolls of Guizhou"
The train is organised around a "Six Scrolls of Guizhou" concept, each scroll a themed itinerary. Two lines launch on opening day: the Mountain Scroll, a two-day one-night journey through the karst forests of southeast Guizhou around Shi Bing's Yuntai Mountain, and the Cloud Scroll, a three-day two-night escape to the Liupanshui highlands, where summer averages a cool 19°C, combining the Yi Torch Festival, horse riding across the Wumeng grasslands and migratory birds on the Caohai wetlands.
Four further scrolls follow: Water around Libo, People at Huangguoshu and Anshun, Spirit on Fanjing Mountain, and Star, pairing astronomy at the FAST telescope with Zunyi's revolutionary heritage. Together they cover Guizhou's six signature tourism regions.
Onboard, a resort in motion
Every carriage is fitted with four-berth soft sleeper cabins, fresh linens for each guest, and panoramic windows that make the scenery the wallpaper. A tea bar, KTV, mahjong lounge and observation dining car convert what would once have been transit space into leisure space, decorated with Guizhou's own cultural motifs. The service model is "arrive aboard, feel at home": a dedicated butler for each carriage, shuttle transfers waiting at every stop, licensed guides throughout, hand-picked hotels on the ground, and regional dishes such as sour fish soup, grassland mutton hotpot and Weining ham hotpot on the table.
The bigger story: a new corridor to Xinjiang
The launch is not only about Guizhou. On 1 September the same brand runs its first direct Guizhou-origin train to Xinjiang: Splendid Rivers and Mountains, a Panorama of Xinjiang, an 18-day journey that loops north, south and east Xinjiang. Four fare tiers, dual guides and an onboard health doctor, alongside a medical car and multi-function entertainment carriages, mark it as a benchmark for long-haul senior travel, and a new southern entry into the Silk Road routes of the northwest.
The next route: Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou in one line
In September the operator's WeChat channel, Southwest Railway Tourism (the same publisher behind the Panda Express family), began promoting a second routing for the Splendid Rivers and Mountains · Colorful Guizhou: a westward line from Guiyang to Panzhihua that strings Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou into a single journey. No fares or departure dates have been published for this routing yet, but the stop list shows the intended shape of the trip.
The published sequence runs Guiyang → Zunyi → Chongqing → Chengdu → Xichang → Panzhihua. From Guiyang's karst peaks and Jiaxiu Pavilion the line climbs past Zunyi's Loushan Pass and the Maotai liquor town on the Chishui River, then layers in Chongqing's stacked hillside cityscape and Chengdu's panda-and-teahouse pace. Past Chengdu the scenery turns again: Qionghai Lake and the space-launch town of Xichang, and finally the dry, sunlit Jinsha River valley of Panzhihua, China's only city named after a flower. The operator frames the selling point exactly as luxury rail travellers would expect: no repeated hotel changes, no complex planning, and the landscape doing the work between stops. Excursion extensions named in the article include Libo's Xiaoqikong, Huangguoshu Falls, Fanjingshan and the Xijiang Miao villages in Guizhou, plus Wulong, Dazu, Jiuzhaigou and Leshan further along the line.
Why it matters
For international travellers, the arrival of a themed Guizhou train adds a fresh gateway to a province whose karst scenery and minority cultures are still under-represented on the global luxury rail map, while the Guizhou-Xinjiang link extends the country's rail network from the tropical south to the desert west in a single booked journey. As the train is positioned for the domestic market today, overseas travellers should book through an English-speaking channel that can verify inclusions and availability before departure.
Sources: People's Daily / China Internet News Center, 13 August 2026; Southwest Railway Tourism WeChat official account, 9 September 2026. Details verified by China Expresses. Train launches, dates and fares can change; confirm before booking.