National Day Vacation - Chongqing

Chongqing is probably one of the craziest cities that I have ever been to in my entire life.  The endless development, the ridiculous number of people, the amazing architecture, the terrible pollution, and so much more.  I was in Chongqing for 3 days and two nights.  During this time I took around 800 pictures because everything in the city was worth photographing.  I pretty much documented just about every aspect of the trip.  I hope everyone enjoys!

Arriving in Chongqing

Upon arriving in Chongqing, I immediately noticed the immense size of the city.  We arrived by train and the ride took about two hours from Chengdu.  The entire train ride we basically went through complete rural looking areas.  There was a lot of farm land, traditional looking houses, and thick forested areas.  To be honest I didn't look out the window much, instead I was reading to kill time quickly.  However, when we were taking the taxi from the train station to the hostel, I couldn't keep my eyes away from the window.  I took a lot of pictures from the taxi window, here are only some of them...

 The taxi driver was very protected from us dangerous wai guo ren (foreigners)...

One of the very first things I noticed was the massive buildings and the horrible air quality in Chongqing...

The buildings seemed to stretch as far as you can see, which really wasn't too far because of the pollution...

There were huge over passes all over the place.  The city is full of hills and the bustling highways were raised far above the ground in some places...

Other pictures from the cab... Pollution was sooo bad

Construction everywhere, even the bridge hadn't been finished yet...

View of one of the metro lines and some towering apartment buildings...

 Buildings were nestled into very tight places...

Horrible traffic... everywhere

Big buildings, air pollution, construction... Get the picture?

This bridge was really cool... Chongqing is basically a city that is mostly developed on the island which sits between two rivers.  The Yangtze and Jailing Rivers meet at the end of the island.  The island is where most of the city is concentrated; although, the city is absolutely massive and there is development throughout all of Chongqing.  The bridge that you see below is under construction right now.  There are two identical bridges that connect the island with the rest of the city.  Both are under construction at the moment.  It really is quite a sight...

 Almost there!

The bridge was really cool.  We were all looking at it in absolute awe. And the fact that there are two identical looking bridges pretty much blows my mind.  Both are almost done being constructed.

More buildings, more construction, more traffic...

After a crazy cab ride we finally arrived to our hostel.  The area that our hostel was in was extremely loud.  Horns honking, people yelling, and the various sounds of construction happening everywhere around us.  I thought it would be impossible to sleep in such an area...

The Hostel

We were dropped off on in an insanely busy area, and I was worried to say the least.  I didn't even know where the hell a hostel would even be until everyone started walking down this steep set of stairs.  We had to wind around this little area that seemed completely out of place to be in the middle of a bustling city.

After several alleys and a lot of stairs we finally arrived at our hostel.  Here are some more pictures from the surrounding area of our hostel.  It truly was like a whole different world in this area.  I really can't explain it.  Everything was so much older and didn't seem to fit in with the surrounding city that has become developed so recently.  Another thing that was absolutely amazing was how quiet the area was.  It was incredibly loud on the street above; however, in this whole different world only 50-75 meters away from the bustling street, it was dead quiet.  I could hear birds and people talking quietly instead of the car horns and various sounds of construction.  

The hostel was simply stunning.  It was a very traditional looking Chinese building.  It had various courtyards throughout the building and open aired ceilings over the courtyards.  Here are some pictures of the hostel...

Pretty cool courtyard, looking into the hangout area...

Courtyard again, Brenna reading...

Traditional style with the open roof top...

And our room for the duration of the trip.  The beds were basically a piece of plywood with a very thin pad on top.  Wasn't too comfortable...

Fish eye view of the fishpond in one of the courtyards...

The straight on view of the fishpond...

The hostel was overall pretty nice.  The hangout area was pretty simple, but it was a good place to drink some beers after a long day of exploring.  

Tourist Adventures

The very first day we arrived in Chongqing we walked around and explored some of the city.  It really was a pretty crazy city.  The docks were full of tourist activities.  Most tourists in Chongqing will take river boat cruises up and down the river.  Those usually take a few days so we did not have time to partake in it; however, I got pictures of the boats!

There wer a ton of boats and people out on the pier...

Another view of the bridge...

This boat was basically a hotel on the water...

 Devin getting artsy...

Pretty bad pollution...

Cool looking gate around town...

This building had a giant green beam coming out of the top of it, pretty weird, but cool...

All of the streets were crowded with people at all times in Chongqing.  Many people would carry the goods they were selling just like this man here...

And from dinner that night.  We had chicken soup.  Basically an entire chicken in the pot and we threw in random vegetables that we had ordered into the soup.  As you can see, there is the chicken head...

 The People's Hall and Three Gorges Museum 

The next day, after a basically sleepless night on the piece of plywood, we woke up early to go on a crazy day of tourist adventures.  The first stop we made was The People's Hall and the Three Gorges Museum.  

The People's Hall was a remarkable building.  It was absolutely beautiful.  It had traditional looking Chinese architecture.  Here are some pictures:

The chief engineer who designed and built the building.  Forget his name though...

More pictures of the impressive structure...

The front gate in the square.  The building directly behind the gate is the Three Gorges Museum...

And finally the view from the Three Gorges Museum...

We didn't end up going in The People's Hall because apparently there wasn't much to actually see inside the building.  Plus we were more excited for the Three Gorges Museum...

The Three Gorges Museum building was also very impressive.  Here are some pictures of the building and the foyer of the building...

And the foyer...

The museum was separated into various different sections.  

Here are pictures from the section about the Three Gorges:

The Three Gorges project is extremely astonishing.  The project was very controversial in China because of the effect that the Three Gorges might have on the environment and for the Yangtze River.  The project would basically turn a section of the Yangtze River into a massive reservoir and raise the water level of the river.  Many towns along the Yangtze would basically be submerged after the project was completed.  Another disadvantage was all of the cultural relics in the Yangtze River area would have to be excavated before the Three Gorges project was completed.  Most of the Three Gorges sections of the museum were dedicated to the relics that were recovered from the Yangtze River basin.  There were a lot of relics throughout the museum that had been recovered form the area.  Unfortunately, we could not see the actual Three Gorges project in real life because it was very far away.  But we did see a miniature model of the project.  Even the tiny model was impressive.

Here are some pictures from the miniature model...

One of these days I would love to visit the Three Gorges project.  From what I have read about it I heard that it is incredible.  I would highly suggest googling "Three Gorges Project" for further reading.  

Here are some pictures of the relics that were recovered from the various areas throughout the Yangtze River basin...

In the Yangtze River basin there were a few rocks that had giant fish carved onto them.  These fish were used thousands of years ago for ancient peoples to determine the water levels of the Yangtze River.  These rocks were completely covered after the Three Gorges Project was completed and in order to preserve these rocks the CCP created an underwater museum so people could still go to see these ancient symbols.  This picture below depicts the project of creating the underwater museum.  I also am very interested in seeing this museum in the future.

More relics...

Probably the first Mahjong set ever created...

And notice the tiny dice

How the ancient people lived in the Yangtze River basin...

The next series of pictures is a sculpture of how the ancient peoples would drag the boats through the low areas of water in the Yangtze.

And a grave...

Even more relics...

On to the Next Destination...

After the Three Gorges Museum we walked a great distance to our next stop, the cable car across the Yangtze River.  The walk enabled us to see even more of Chongqing.  Here are some cool pictures I took...

Probably the coolest building I have ever seen..

Next we went to this crazy mall.  The mall had just about everything you could ever imagine.

Some guys making some Chinese candy.  Repeatedly hitting it with hammers.  Apparently they hit the candy over one thousand times...

Snacking on a chicken foot... not really my favorite...

A cave built into the side of the building...

I thought this was very cool.  An old Chinese building that still exists in the very center of town.  Old in the midst of new....

We finally made it to the cable car and I took a video of the cable car ride.  Check it out:

Cable Car Ride - Daytime

Across the Yangtze River the town could not have been anymore different.  The town reminded me a lot of Pengshan in a few ways.  There were very few people and a lot of the stores and shops were much simpler than in the main area of Chongqing.  

These pictures are the part of town that we saw immediately after we got off the cable car.

I saw at least four or five shops that just had a ton of people playing Mahjong...

Another street in the area.  Far less people than in the main areas of Chongqing...

We then decided to take a bus ride up to the top of the mountain in the area.  I thought that there was just a park at the top of the mountain; however, it turns out there that is a decent sized town at the top and also a lot of development...

Here are some pictures of an international high school

The marsh in the middle of the high school was really cool.  Unfortunately we could not walk on the wooden walk ways in the middle of the marsh.  It was probably for the best though, who knows how stable they were.

A new development area.  I can only imagine what sort of monstrous building they plan to put in this area...

A random set of long and scary looking stairs in the middle of nowhere...

View from the top of the mountain...  Pollution basically blocks any line of sight...

At the top of the mountain there was a Taoist Monastery that we went into.  It was a very cool place.  We were extremely tired by this point in the day but we had to make the most of our time in Chongqing since we were only there for such a short period of time.  The Taoist Monastery was a recreation of traditional Taoist Monasteries that were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.

A family going through the traditional practices...

The area of the monastery was absolutely beautiful.  It was tucked into the woods high up on the mountain.  All of the buildings were built into the side of the mountain as you will see...

Lots of pollution.  The degree of the pollution became very evident up in the mountain because we couldn't see very far out into the distance...

Stairs.... this place had so many god damn stairs...

More candle lighting and other relics...

Really bad smog...

Yes, more stairs...

Yin & Yang...

And the homie... this little guy followed us around quite a bit.  It was basically the most perfect place for a dog to live.  Endless exploring for him...

A good view? Who knows, the smog is horrible..

 We FINALLY made it to the top... took forever...

Group photo - Devin - Me - James in the back - and one of James' students, Chres

 Group pic again...

A Pagoda style building within the monastery...

 Typical view...

Beautiful paintings all over the building...

The monastery had a ton of these little figures throughout the building...

The people who work in the monastery sleep there too, I guess...

It was built right into the side of the mountain...

 I'm Taoist now...

The whole monastery was very cool.  I walked up and down more stairs than I have in my entire life but it was well worth it.  

Hot Pot!

Towards the end of our time on the other side of the Yangtze River we had to go and get some hot pot. Chongqing is well know for its delicious hot pot, and it was amazing.  I have had hot pot a few times since I have been in Sichuan Province; however, this was most definitely the best I have had yet.

We went to the restaurant a little early, so it wasn't too crowded, thank god.  We tried to go to a hot pot place the night before and we were told that we would have to wait over an hour...

Our dipping sauce...

 The actual hot pot...

 Our vegetables, meat, eggs, and noodles...

And some more meat...

And of course, meatballs...

Some dumplings and on the far side is some tofu...

The closest plate consists of string like mushrooms.  They are very good...

Some fish...

And when we were just about done with the hot pot... James grabbing the very last egg that he can find.  He still needs some work with his chop sticks skills...

After a long day of walking all over Chongqing it was necessary to stuff our faces with some delicious hot pot.  The meal was outstanding, but after dinner it was time to head back to the cable car for one final ride over the Yangtze.  This time we got to go over the river at night and see all of the buildings lit up.  And yes, I have another video!

Cable Car Ride - Night Time

Back in the main city area of Chongqing we had to end our trip right.  Basically all the girls decided to go to bed but the guys went out to live it up in the city.  The city was beautiful at night.  All of the buildings were lit up.  It was gorgeous.  

These pictures are from the town square.  The square has all of the most high end shops as you will see from the pictures below.  The streets were even more crowded at night than they were during the day.  

After the town square we headed back to the mall area that we visited earlier in the day.  There were a lot of Western bars in the area.  We hung out on the roof at first to finish up our road beers.  There are no public drinking laws in China so we walked around for a while drinking beers in preparation for the night.  

I finally had my first IPA since I left the states.  It was wonderful.  I love IPAs...

A friendly reminder from the bar...

Got pretty drunk that night at the bars... This is what I looked like traveling the next day... Yeah, I looked like shit...

The trip to Chongqing was great.  It was a very quick trip so we had to fit everything into basically one day.  It has taken me two and a half days of recovery from the trip.  I probably got about 10 hours of sleep total while I was in Chengdu for one night and Chongqing for 2 nights.  There was a lot of drinking and a lot of exploring.  Somehow I survived the trip...   To top things off, on the trip back to Chengdu, the only seats available on the train were standing tickets.  

My seat, or standing area, was basically right next to the water dispenser.  The entire train ride I had people standing over me filling up their water bottles while I sat on my bag and watched movies.  Photo credit goes to Devin.  

Hope everyone enjoyed the post.  Not sure how I was able to actually create such a large post with so much information considering I'm still hungover/tired from the trip. 

 Alright, until next time...

Jono