Long transfer day today. First a drive back from Yangshou to Guilin (about two hours), a flight from Guilin to Chongqing (about two hours), then meet up with a new guide – Royce, who took us to a lovely restaurant for lunch. I kinda inadvertently killed lunch though. Chongqing is in the middle of Szechwan Province and people here have a penchance for strong spicy foods – lots of chili for sale in the markets. Anyway, it is the home of famous Kung Pao Chicken dish, so we thought we would have that for lunch… only Mr K thought he had better tell the staff that I don’t like my food too spicy, and asked for them to go mild on the chili. But when the meal came out, it was all Kung and no Pao at all, they had omitted all the chili instead of just going easy on it. It was still very tasty, but I can just imagine some cranky chef in the kitchen going, ‘Bloody foreigners, ruining my cooking with their no chili cooking!’, when all we wanted was not to have to reach for glasses of milk. 🙂 Oh well, the rest of lunch was delicious – rice, some strange duck dish and some dumplings. We really are being very well fed on this trip.
After lunch we head off to the Chongqing Zoo to meet some giant pandas! I have bee to zoos all over the world, and I don’t think I have ever seen pandas before, so it is kinda cool to get to see them here in China. Unforutnatey due to deforestation, the great panda are endangered. Everyone knows this already, and sadly numbers are down around the 1000 mark, which is very sad for China and the world. Our guide tried to tell us that due to global warming the pandas don’t have the inclination for the ‘marriage and the babies, they have no sex’ so most panda conceptions are occuring through artificial reproductive technology now. Also very sad. This week the Chengdou Panda Research Centre saw two baby pandas born, and the country rejoices at news like this… but it feels like too little too late. Great pandas live to about 25-35 years old and consume 30kgs of bamboo per day. They really are a magnificent animal, and I hope efforts to preserve them bear better and faster fruit than they seem to be so far. This is Youyou, she was born here in 2006:
After visiting the great pandas at the Chongqing Zoo, we went for a drive to the Old Town, which is the only part of Chongqing that survived the significant bombing that Japan reigned down on the region in World War II. The Old Town is from the feudal Qing Dynasty which lasted from 1645 to 1911. Chongqing is now an enormous metropolis, a city of some 32 million people, that is roughly the population of Canada crammed into one city. It is by far, China’s biggest city by population, but not by land mass.
Our drive to the Old Town took us past a myriad of highrise apartment buildings as all the local live in very high density housing. As you can imagine the traffic is more than crazy and it feels even worse than Beijing… horns getting a good work out all the time, and cars just going in everywhich direction. Chaotic is the only way to describe it.
The Old Town, however, retains much of its original charm and original buildings. There are some vignettes set up to show what life used to be like in the Qing Dynasty. The large statue of Emperor Yu dominates the main hall, any time a statue is depicted with a shovel in this shape it is alway Emperor Yu. People come to pay homage here, make wishes and leave blessings. It feels like a Buddhist temple, but it is a historical and political site, not a religious site.
After we left the Old Town, we went for a fly by visit to a local cave called the Hongya Cave. It is a small (10m deep) cave with a pretty waterfall spilling from it. A large hotel was built beside the waterfall many years ago along with an obligatory shopping centre. So we had a wander around the area before heading to our river cruise ship – the President No 7. We have three nights on the President No 7 sailing down the Yangtze River. I’m very much looking forward to all the beautiful scenery.