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Published: June 23rd 2008
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The Yangze River at Chongqing
Hazy days don't make for good travel photos and this one is no exception, but at least it gives you an idea of the city and the river. 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 Chongqing (pronounced Chong-ching) hang around streetcorners and in front of big stores, each with a shortish, thick pole with a long rope. They suspend the load from the pole with the rope - either a single end or balance from both ends - and transport boxes, baskets and bags.
Dined in Bayi Lu, locally known as “tasty eating street” and it
Different epochs
Most of the cities I've seen so far are recent construction, but every now and then you find something ancient tucked away in the shadow of the new. lives up fully to the sobriquet. Lots of stalls and quick-order places selling things on sticks. Don’t know everything I ate. Some of it was pork, some potato, some green pepper and some those flappy dark Chinese mushrooms. Could only guess at the rest. All of it was good and bathed in spicy sauce. Total bill: 30 cents (US).
Visited the main pedestrian street here and at night it’s neon city. Green, red, blue yellow, all flashing and changing colour to grab your attention. Big screens with running advertisements for movies, liquor, appliances and personal body care products. Capitalist promotion on a scale writ large.
Youth hostel here has the most uncomfortable bed I’ve ever slept in. This really was just a blanket on a plank. Sleeping was painful and the places was full of roaches. Saw one as big as a Cadillac. But the staff were very nice and very helpful. My room-mate, Frank from Taiwan, took me to a supermarket to buy several days worth of food for my upcoming cruise down the Yangze through Three Gorges.
Usually riverboat cruises leave directly from Chongqing, but after the earthquake authorities feel the river may not be
Coolies
Coolies cool their heels as they wait for clients. safe, so they moved the departure downriver to Wanzhou, a four-hour drive.
I take a bus with Hamdan beside me, a Malay from Singapore. He’ll turn out to be my room-mate aboardship, along with another guy. Hamdan is a second-year mechanical engineering student who speaks very good English but not Mandarin.
Ring loud, talk loud
Chinese ringtones are set to full volume, as are their voices when talking on them. This is about face. Volume equals importance, so a loud ring draws attention as does a loud voice. They all shout into their phones. I can’t help thinking they’re all shouting “Yes Mr. President” when talking to an auto mechanic or a wife (women aren’t as loud on cellphones as men). They also seem to squabble loudly without embarrassment, unless I’m mistaking red-faced discussion for argument.
We board the ship and meet Han Bin, who works in the computer graphics field and speaks very good, very precise English. He’s enthusiastic and helpful and translates all of the ship’s announcements for us.
For dinner I ate one of my supermarket meals, a bucket-shaped carton half-full of dehydrated noodles (add hot water), several packets of spices and
That's the way to do it
Just in case you're not sure how to hold them, Chongqing offers a giant demonstration right out in public. sauce and a pair of chpsticks so small for my hand they felt like toothpicks. After supper I hung around a bit, then lay down. My bunk must have been built by the chopsticks manufacturers because it felt more like a coffin. My head and feet touched the ends and it was barely wider than my shoulders.
The next day we entered Three Gorges and it’s really impressive. Steep hills and vertical cliffs, yellowish and blackstreaked. At places the river is wide, in places narrow. Signs all along the way indicate its final depth once the damn further downstream is finished. They read 175m. The river now stands at 145m. Does this mean standard depth to the bottom, or the amount the river has already risen? We see houses and building, mostly uninhabited, that will surely end u submerged, farmland that will disappear. How much already sits below water, below the river’s silty, opaque surface?
We transferred to a smaller ferry to go up a Yangze tributary through Lesser Three Gorges. Dramatic scenery. First it was farmland along the river’s edge but soon things became too steep and it became all narrow river, high peaks, cliffs, steep slopes
Food stall in "Tasty Eating Street"
Not knowing what it all is, you just have to choose what appeals to the eye and what you think your stomach can handle. that came down into green water under sunny skies.
The ship’s crew invited me to the bridge for pictures of us, Hamdan and I, steering the ship. The crew wanted me to give 100 yuan to the captain for this, but I refuse. Sour faces result. Did I misunderstand something? Was it just the usual grab for money from the “rich” tourist (didn’t see any Chinese up there)? Or should I really have seen this as a privilege for which some money would be correct? I don’t know, but the 100 yuan, or USD 15 seems excessive for 10 minutes on the bridge.
We visited Dachang, an ancient town that’s been relocated, rebuilt stone by stone high above the river. It's now a tourist village, like Jamestown or Old Fort William at Thunder Bay, and it seems empty and forlorn. The new dwellings that the government built for the villagers are identical, four-storey and white. Row after row of absolute sameness. No individual identity, just a sense-dulling collectiveness. It made me think of a vacation village designed by a committee of aesthetic cripples, a committee of efficiency experts, not architects.
We returned to the bigger ship and
Impressive
As with the Himalayas, you can't really convey this with a photo. continue downriver, sitting on the upper deck with Kim and Laura (both USA), drinking beer and watching the landscape glide by. We went through the second of the three gorges and the peaks rose dramatically again, including Goddess Peak. The Chinese all rushed for their cameras.
In the night mice got into Han Bin’s peanut bag beside his bed and I had to get up to put it into a cupboard so the squeaking and rustling wouldn’t keep me awake.
The final day was very hazy and we couldn’t see much as we went through the third gorge. By late morning we’d come to the lake behind the dam, to port. A tour bus took us to the dam itself for a visit to the scenic lookout. Not much to see. A few hundred metres of dam disappearing into the mist. The dam is more than 2000 metres wide. It’s disappointing, but still impressive in its own, ghostlike way.
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