About Chongqing

Night is falling on our last day of vacation. Today Rachel was "busy as a bee" (her words) transforming the cheap seasonal apples into applesauce (to be frozen for winter) and apple crisp (already eaten). Meanwhile, we enjoyed the second of two beautiful days - sunny and warm, with only a hint of coolness to the air. We are still sleeping with the window open, fan on, and little more than a sheet to cover us. I'll be miserable come January, but right now Chengdu seems like a great place to be.

I said I would return with a few words about our time in Chongqing. So, here goes...

We stayed 3 nights at the InterContinental Hotel, in the swanky new shopping district downtown. Everything was new and neon...because, it is all new. Chongqing, though a bustling metropolis that is bigger than Chengdu, is a relatively new construct of the federal government trying to "remake" western China into a manufacturing hub. So, there's new money and new business pouring in, and most all the buildings and roads are new, too.

The biggest difference when comparing the cities is the elevation. Chongqing is set between the big Yangtze River and mountains all around; so the city is spread out, full of bridges, and set at a whole host of differing elevations. This makes traffic awful and difficult to navigate, in my opinion. We spent good chunks of time in our few bus/taxi rides waiting around for traffic to clear while going up or down hills. And unlike Chengdu, don't even THINK about stepping out in traffic to cross the street when you see a truck coming downhill at you. They just won't stop.

In terms of our activity there, we got some rest and good food at the hotel. Rachel decided to get sick the last day, so she had to miss out on day 3 of the glorious hotel breakfast buffet. It was amazing. We took a river cruise, which allowed us to gawk at the city's neon lights, be gawked at by the locals, sip overpriced beer and soda, all while a recording played us some unintelligible information about the buildings. [I'd recommend the Chicago architecture cruise, if you can only do 1 urban river cruise this year] Below you can see our ship.



But the highlight was going to visit fellow NU alum and expat Michael Brown, who has called Chongqing home for the past 1+ years. We hiked up a mountain behind his school to "get a good view of the city" - actually, we just got a better view of the nasty haze that envelops the city. Oh well. I wasn't surprised.

Then we stopped for "mountain spring" tea on the way down. The proprietor was actually a well-known artist who creates gorgeous work on cloth scrolls. He showed us several of his works-in-progress, including one of the Yangtze River circa second century A.D. that was 16 meters long! We munched on moon cakes, played with his dogs, sipped tea (made with water that literally flows out of the mountain rock and through the mouth of a god), and tried to listen in as the artist and Michael philosophized on the learning of language. The Chinese level was definitely over our head.

It was fun to see him, and get out to see some of the city OTHER than its shopping malls.







Good trip, but not a place I would spend my own money to go back to.

-alan