Visit to Gjirokaster to visit Master Kadare

In "Stone City Chronicles", the great Albanian writer Ismail Kadare describes his childhood hometown, Gjirokastra, a stone city with an ancient history (built in the 4th century AD) and unique Albanian character, and records the weird and dark fairy-tale-like life in the small town during the war years in his eyes. If I were to design a travel guide for you to Kadare after touring Lake Ohrid - and to visit Enver Hoxha, once a "good European" friend of the Chinese people (they are from the same hometown) - it would be to take a bus from Ohrid directly to the capital Tirana, from there to the southern "museum mountain city" Gjirokaster, where 600 Ottoman-era houses are well preserved, then back to Tirana, and then to Shkoder in the mountains in the north. It is the birthplace of the first Illyrian (the ancestors of the Albanian nation) state and the setting of the cruel story in one of Kadare's most fascinating novels, Broken April. Without going to the mountains, you cannot understand ancient Albania and you cannot fully understand Kadare. Walking on the old town streets of Gjirokaster is like climbing a mountain. In what may be the world's most sloping city, the roof of a house may be connected to the foundation of the house above, covered with gray slate like scales of shells, and underfoot are the scattered bones of the things that grew these scales. Humans once generally believed in the regenerative power of stone. A stone city may naturally carry some kind of immortal self. From the Illyrians to the Albanians, the descendants of the "Mountain Eagle" have always been invaded, occupied and oppressed throughout history, but they have never surrendered.