So far, this was my favorite part of the trip – the city of Chongqing. I was curious about seeing Chongqing, China’s largest city with a population of 32 million. Ever heard of it? (I believe the old British name was “Chungking”) What must a city like this look like, I wondered. We left Xi’an for Chongqing on China Airlines in rainy and misty cloudy weather. Once we broke through the clouds, I could see the sharply undulating green landscape. As a matter of fact, the city has nicknames like “The Mountain City” and “The City of Fog”. It reminded me of Seattle in a way. The city hung in a soupy fog and the roads twist and turn tortuously along steep hills. Two rivers, the Yangzi (or more *accurately* the Chang Jiang) and the Jialing Jiang confluence in this city. There are several bridges connecting different sections of the city across the massive rivers, most being under construction!A small section of Chongqing (this pic looks more cheery than most):

The rain continued as we disembarked from the bus on our first stop, a zoo that housed some of the famous Sichuan pandas. One adult panda proudly displayed a great dance move at almost every turn he made. He’d sit down and stretch his paws towards the sky and then twist his body in the direction he wanted to go. It got lots of cheers from the crowd. Later on, even better, was a 6-month old panda. I’d heard about this one before – apparently he was conceived by the zookeepers showing the parents some panda pornography…or something like that! Anyway, this little fellow was very playful, running and jumping, then playing with a ball and climbing into a tree, much to the consternation of the zookeeper.

Here’s the long (3-minute) movie of the pandas (lots of action).

We then went to a nearby art studio to learn about some of the local art, mostly paintings on silk canvases. I ended up parting with some of my hard earned money by investing in a sweet panorama of the Three Gorges painted on a silk tapestry. For original artwork though, it was a steal. I’m looking forward to putting it over my fireplace, but I’ll need to find a reputable place to put my North Cascades panorama.

After the art studio, we went to old town Chongqing. This was fascinating. This is a small and rapidly disappearing section of the city that is the way China has been for many many years. In fact, according to the guide, most of Chongqing was this way as early as only 10 years ago. But, with China’s economic boom, most of the old parts of the city have been replaced by more modern high rises (though many are still shabby, not nearly as nice as Shenzhen). We started on a rise overlooking the old town and then descended into the madness. The smells and sights were powerful, almost too much for some of the tourists. It was a little unfortunate that we went down as such a large group (almost 30) because we caused so much staring, but it was still fascinating regardless. As we descended the soggy stone stairs, I saw the most primitive hair salon ever: inside a small stony covering surrounded by food and other vendors were two chairs. One man was having a hair cut and the other his hair washed by the garden hose. Though it was still afternoon with plenty of light, there was so much overhead vegetation and then the darkness of the stones caused the picture to be too dark. I did take some other photos as you can see below.

There were all sorts of street salesmen here (still no DVDs that I saw). The food smells were pungent. Lots of vegetables, hanging meats, outdoor cooking were all around us. A woman was hanging her laundry on the tenuously strung powerlines above. A little girl, no more than six years old with a huge cleaver was chopping nuts. All in all, we spent maybe 30 minutes strolling through Old Town (it’s not very big and may not last…so hurry), but it was something that I won’t forget any time soon.

After seeing the colorfully colorless old town, we made our way down to the banks of the Yangzi, just before the confluence, where we boarded the Victoria Empress to begin the three day cruise down the river through the Three Gorges.

Boarding the ship:

Chongqing from the Yangzi at night: