Chongqing to Chengdu

I think its:
2009-03-07 Saturday
Yangtze River - Domestic Cruise – First class ticket!

One of the things we both really wanted to see was the Three Gorges recently dammed on the Yangtze River. Looking at the map, it was only an inch away from Yangshuo. So, after an hour and a half’s bus ride to Guilin and a seventeen hour sleeper train ride we finally arrived at Chungking and I don’t know how many km’s north. We actually arrived yesterday, but right now we are cruising down the Yangtze. Sitting on the top deck, enjoying the warm sunshine and the beautiful countryside

But let me tell you about the train first. We could, of course, have flown but we wanted to experience a Chinese sleeper train. We have used the sleeper train in Malaysia, however, that particular experience was based on sleeping in a carriage not dislike the sleeper train in the film Some Like it Hot. At that time we had no choice on carriage but this time we could choose the soft sleeper, or ‘1st’ class. We knew that the carriage would have four bunks and a soft mattress and were both pleasantly surprised by what we found.

We departed Guilin promptly at 1.45pm and so had 5 hours of daylight to appreciate the changing scenery, then, dinner in the restaurant car (another first for the two of us) which was also pleasantly palatable. The journey was mainly smooth going and we did actually manage to sleep quite a lot although I couldn’t say it was ‘a good night’s sleep. We were both very happy that we didn’t have to share our little space and we could lock our door when we went to sleep.

The train arrived later at Chongqing station than we had expected but there were plenty of taxi’s waiting to take you where ever you may wish to go but our preferred method of transport was bus – you just get to see more of the life of the place by taking the bus, and of course it is much cheaper. With all the stopping and starting the journey to Ciqikou, the oldest part of Chongqing did take longer than we were expecting but it was still too early for our room to be ready, so we were not in any hurry. The bus dropped us off at the ‘city gate’ and we had to walk along two very lively quaint, narrow, flagstone streets lined with wooden buildings dating around circa 1900 now with the street level turned into shops selling either food or more tourist tat. After we have checked in to the ‘Perfect Time Hostel’ and freshened up after our night on the tracks we set about exploring. Past the two streets I mentioned earlier there is very little to see except maybe visit a temple. It is, nonetheless, a very pretty place and a photographer’s delight with two of the Chinese tourists asking if they could have their photo taken with us.

Lunch was very interesting as this was the first place we have visited where there is no English on any menu. The young man running the place, despite being in the middle of his own family lunch, spent some time with us and we ended up (!) having a dish that was really just fried tomato and cross between an omelette and scrambled eggs this was then followed by some very strange dish. We thought we were getting noodles but it turned out to be some deep fried beef with a side bowl with Chinese tomato sauce that the beef is supposed to be dipped in. After this came a Sichuanese chicken and nut dish (Sichuanese cooking has a reputation for being particularly hot and spicy, or hot and numb, to dispel the cold damp weather of the region). Dinner was even stranger. We had absolute no idea what we had ordered and weren’t really any wiser when it arrived. Paul had stared to feel a little ‘unwell’ and although I did eat some of the thing contained within it with yellow peppers and tree mushrooms there was also some very strange ingredients that I really couldn’t cope with that had the taste and texture of cardboard.

The next day we had to carry ourselves and our rucksacks back to where we had been dropped off the previous day and we collected by a tour guide to go and see the rock carvings at Dazu. It took over two hours to get there and we were the only non Chinese members of the 40 strong audience. Some of the roads were in an appalling state with us all coming out of our seats at several of the craters in the road. However, the discomfort was worth while when we finally arrived (shaken but not stirred). Lunch was part of the package so the whole tour, including us, poured into the restaurant and dish after dish after dish was brought out. There was a fish dish – I didn’t actually get to try this but basically the whole fish, including head and tail, was cooked and put on a plate covered with sauce. What one does is fill ones little bowl with rice and then help oneself to bits of the other dishes using ones chopsticks (apparently a major cause of hepatitis B in China). The tables were set for up to eight people each and so we came to share a meal with six Chinese chopstick naturals and luckily, I very happy to report, we didn’t embarrass ourselves but used our chopsticks almost competently!

We had one of the better guides who spent quiet a lot of time explaining the details of each of the carvings. I say ‘better’ because other guides seem to catch up with us and pass us by while we were still getting tour guide details. As to the accuracy of the guide I could not really comment as it was all in Chinese! Fortunately there were some English explanation plaques but the translation had been carried out by a Chinese person and these translations don’t always make sense. Luckily Paul’s guide book had given us a rough guide on what to expect and the story attached. The carvings tell of the beliefs of a mix of Buddhist, Taoist and Confucianist ideologies and are very impressive in both the size and the number of the carvings. 10,000 images are carved into caves and overhangs of the mountain Baoding Shan. The project was the ‘life work’ of a monk, Zhao Zhifeng, which he oversaw between 1179 -1245 - the Song and Tang Dynasties.

Our luggage (three rucksacks) was left in the care of the tour guides office and so on return we, and our luggage, were bundled into a small mini bus and transported down to another branch of the tour guide down by the docks where we had pick up our tickets for our long awaited cruise. Several other things were also arranged, three excursions along the way, a Three Gorges Dam tour, accommodation at the other end plus flights to Chengdu and it was then time to board our cruise boat. As soon as we got up for the desk there appeared a porter insisting on carrying both of the large rucksacks which he tied to either end of his trusty wooden pole. I think he was a bit shocked when he lifted the pole onto his shoulder but her carried them all the way to the dock, came on the cable car with us, onto the boat where he waited patiently for us to book in and then up a flight of stairs finally deposited his load on our cabin floor. The normal chain of events is to ask the price then haggle them down but when he only asked for 50 Yuan (about £5) we just gave it straight to him, gratefully.

We had mentioned to Lucy in Yangshuo that we had chosen a ‘domestic’ rather than the ‘luxury’ cruise and she had giggled and said something like ‘a real Chinese experience’ and gave us an idea of what to expect. The décor in our first class cabin is shabby, very shabby, but the Chinese are generally very friendly and several had already said hello and ‘where you from’ before we had even left the cable car.

And so, here we are sitting on the top deck in the sunshine. Although I am wearing three layers and when the boat goes round a bend I have to slip on my fleece lined North Face jacket that I had to purchase in Yangshuo to keep warm (but that’s another story I haven’t got round to telling you about).

Departure time was 11pm last night and so we didn’t actually get to bed until about 12.30am this morning. We were told by the tour operator that the first excursion would leave the boat at 8am next morning. We actually had to leave the boat at 6.30am this morning to go on the first of the excursions which meant getting up at 5.15 so that we could have a cup of coffee, dress and have a Chinese breakfast before the three hour tour. On leaving the boat we noticed another European who is a young German guy who we can only remember as George and who, it turns out, spent 3 weeks in Portsmouth as an exchange student at the end of the period that we lived there.

After that George spent most of his time in our company. Tall, blond, very good looking in a rugged unshaven way and in his early twenties, I didn’t mind the extra company. His English was very, very good and as well as having someone else to share his experience of the Three Gorges I think he likes to take every opportunity to practice his English. The three of us also had very similar views on Chinese heritage and the Chinese people. There are two habits the Chinese have, and this is the men and the women, which are somewhat distasteful are; one is not only do they chew their food with their mouths open they seem to ‘lip smack’ as well and the other is they hawk up a mouthful of sputum, from the very depths, and then gob it out. George mentioned how ‘he didn’t like to see a pretty young girl do this’ – but they do! The only other sometime irritating characteristic is the volume of their conversations. Oh, and just one other thing – they are allowed to smoke in restaurants!

Anyway, back to this first excursion – Ghost City. Based on religious ideology, there are 18 levels of hell. If you have been a good person you get a passport straight to heaven but if you have been bad, depending on how bad you have been, you will go to one of these 18 levels. We haven’t yet worked out how this fits in with anything we thought we knew about either Buddhism, Confucianism or Taoism. Originally this site was a temple (which is still there but not necessarily worth the climb to see it) but they have this really tacky ‘chamber of horrors does the 28 levels of hell’ side show. There was some comment in Pauls guide book about it which I thought was a little disrespectful when he first read it to me but having seen the show I can now appreciate the books comments.

The rest of the day has been spent mainly in deck watching the countryside go by.

Later – We were also booked to go to the Zheng Fei Temple, recently relocated, brick by brick, to the town of Yunyang to save it from the rising waters of the dam reservoir, which was due to start at 8pm. They also got the timing for this wrong as well and we didn’t get there to start until 9pm. Clearly very dark at this time of day, as we drew up to the wharf all you could see was an electric red outline or the temple roof and what seemed like lots of other lights too. ‘Here we go again’ we thought ‘another tourist theme park’ but were really rather surprised. The building, once you got inside, was obviously very old and one part was dedicated to the very great scholars who took the ‘Imperial Exam’ based on Confusionist ideology. These men (never was this education going to be offered to a female) studied for a great part of their lives to take this exam and left behind a great deal of work in the form of slabs – basically there is a large area of great big slabs, possibly slate, covered in hand chiselled calligraphy – when you look you can appreciate their different ‘hand writing’ - but it is said that they cannot be ‘faulted’.

The top part of the temple is dedicated to one of the characters in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms generally based on truth but with a little enhancement and far too long a story to go into here. We did enjoy this trip and learned a little more of China ancient history.

Up again the next morning at 6.30 am as we sailed through the first of the three gorges and onto our last excursions of the cruise into the ‘lesser three gorges’ for more amazing scenery. We had to change boats to a smaller craft and then when we got to the end we changed to much smaller boats holding about 40 people each where the Chinese guide told us all about something of the area in Chinese and then sang to us, told us all how poor they were and muct have asked for a donation of 10 yuan per person, cos all the Chinese coughed up. Paul and I were a bit ‘miffed’ about being told to ‘tip’ by the guide, but it was only a quid each and we didn’t want to give the Brits a bad image. That didn’t bother George though – he just refused saying “my guide already paid”. One of the memorable things from this trip was a little snack that was being sold – a whole bird, minus the feathers, that had been bbq’d or deep fried and had a stick up through it so that you ate it like an ice cream, but it still had it’s head and feet and presumably all it’s bones – very odd, not at all British – actually George seemed to feel the same way as well.

Then the boat docked and we left our cruise at 8.30pm and were taken, with the rest of the people from our boat who were also doing the dam the next day, to our hotel for the night ready to be picked up the morning.