Blogs from Chongqing, Chongqing, China, Asia - page 8

As I promised, this blog will describe the school. School still does not start for another week. This week, we are preparing our classrooms and going through orientation. The only teachers here so far are the Chinese teachers/parapros and an Australian teacher for the 3-4 year old class. The Australian teacher is in Chongqing because her fiancé works for the Hilton here. All of the teachers are young so far; I don’t think anyone is over thirty. All of the classrooms are octagonal. The president of QSI likes this design because it lets in a lot of natural light. I will be teaching the 12 and 13 year old class. As of now I think I only have five students. Hard to imagine I know! I am a little concerned about how my classroom will run ... read more

June 24 Having seen Chengdu and visited the main sights of the area (namely the Panda Reserve and the Giant Buddha) we decided to move on to our next port of call - Chongqing (haha its funny you see because it’s a port). The aim here was to find a cheap cruise down the Yangtze River so that we could see the Three Gorges and the famous Three Gorges Dam. In China they have 3 cities that are known as the three furnaces because of how hot they can get in the Summer, one of these is Chongqing. Chongqing is one of the more heavily populated cities in China and this probably goes to add to this furnace effect with cars in even greater abundance here than anywhere else we’ve seen. Having arrived at Chongqing train ... read more

Formerly known as Chungking, this is a big city where the Yangze flows by curiously reddish in colour like flow-off from iron ore. Took a cable car suspended above the river to the principal downtown area. Walking the busy streets under drizzle, I thought this was as I often imagine the Orient to be like during monsoon season: endless dripping rain and dark, wet streets, dim light under a heavy grey sky. The Chinese stare at foreigners, but more surreptitiously than the jawdrop, open-face staring of Indians. A temporary slide into paranoia here: the Chinese seem to laugh at me at times (others have commented on this, too), as if big noses and body hair are reasons for ridicule and mirth. I stare back and usually they avert their gaze quickly. Coolies on corners Coolies in ... read more

At Yangshou, we were trying to decide whether to go to Chengdu to visit the Pandas or Chongqing to do a cruise down the Yangtze River to visit the Three Gorges Dam. We only had time to do one and Chris' engineering interest in the dam swayed the decision! We arrived in Chongqing and only planned to be here one night before getting the boat down the river, however they were all fully booked for 2 days! We eventually got a ticket but had to go 1st class (twin room) instead of 2nd (4 beds in a cabin). Shame!! We decided to go for the Chinese boat as it was a third of the price of an international boat but it meant that no-one would speak English! Whilst killing time in Chongqing we went to General ... read more

Chongqing surprised us both. We had read in the Lonely Planet that it is nothing more than 'concrete city' - a stop-off on the way to a Yangtze Cruise - so we didn't expect to see bright neon lights, swanky restaurants and a Hong Kong style skyline across the river. But that was what we found. We had taken a bus from Chengdu to Chongqing. The journey was only around 4 hours and so we arrived early evening and jumped in a taxi to our hostel. Unfortunately the staff at our hostel spoke very little English so we had a few communications problems when we first arrived. After we settled in we took a stroll along the riverfront to admire the skyline. We came across some traditional chinese dancing going on in a square and sat ... read more