Big Cities, West and East (China)

One arriving in Chongqing we made our way to the apartment complex where our Couchsurfing host Daniel and his family lived.  We waited for him to get home from work in the gardens outside. While there we saw the confusing spectacle o two women (mother and daughter maybe?) apparently arguing about the division of a bag of bananas. They eventually departed, leaving about half a dozen behind on the bench where they were sitting then after about ten minutes the older lady returned and picked them up. No idea what that was about.

We eventually met Daniel's wife who brought us up to the flat and in short order we'd me their son Mango (he was about 3 or 4 years old) and Daniel's parents who also lived there.

Almost straight after the introductions it was time to go out for dinner.  This being Chongqing, it wasn't surprising that dinner was Hot Pot. This spicy, sociable cook-it-yourself meal is popular all over China and especially in Sichuan province.  But nowhere is it spicier or more popular than in Chongqing. Daniel told us that many of the city's residents will eat it two or more meals a week. 

Our version was consumed at a fun, brightly coloured restaurant where you chose your own items to dip in the fiery/mouth numbing Ma La broth.  They also plonked a crate of beer down next to the table, and at the end of the meal they simply counted the number of bamboo skewers/plates you'd gone through and the number of missing bottles and charged you accordingly.

Chongqing is supposed to be the hottest city in all of China, so we were lucky that this mid-June evening was still pleasantly cool and perfect for a walk along the Jialing river.  (Chongqing sits at the confluence of the Jialing and the  Yangtze, though depending on who you ask, the Yangtze River only properly begins in Chongqing).

Chongqing's skyline across the river was pretty darned impressive. Masses of skyscrapers and neon had me thinking it almost out Hong Konged Hong Kong. Meanwhile, down by the river bank, much dimmer lights marked people fishing illegally, as massive declines in fish stocks in the city's rivers led the government to enact a total ban.

The next day was probably our busiest in Chongqing. We started out taking the subway across the river where we explored Hongya Cave, a complex of old-style Chongqing buildings whose brilliant lights were one of the highlights of the previous evening's river promenade. It's meant to mimic the stilt houses that covered much of the city until about 10 years ago. It's a bit cheesy touristy, but was still fun.

After this we walked across a bridge spanning the Yangtze and, after a bit of work finding the stop, took the cable car back across (Pro tip: the queues for the cable car on the city centre side are huge, while they're almost non-existent on the south side of the river.)

Back on the peninsula we took the metro to Ciqikou Ancient Town. The architecture is pretty neat, but pretty much all of the buildings were filled with (domestic) tourist focused shops and eateries. And this being the Friday before a long weekend the tourist hordes were out in force.

After a bit of an explore we headed home to begin preparing for the dinner we'd promised our hosts. Home made tortillas, spicy-sour peppers and onions, salsa fresca and a sweet corn and coriander salad made a Tex-Mex feast that everyone (even, to our slight surprise, Daniel's parents) thoroughly enjoyed.  An for once I didn't need to stay my hand when adding chilies, as Chongqingers are probably the biggest Chili fans in all of China.

The next morning we had breakfast with Daniel's wife and son before they left town to spend the long weekend with her parents. I was very rapidly becoming a major fan of the simple but spicy noodle soup called Chongqing Xiao Mian.

On our own again we tried and failed miserably to find our way into a hilltop park (we ended up walking through an abandoned part of town that seemed to be scheduled for demolition!)

This gave us enough time to find our way to the Chongqing Sichuan Opera Theatre. We bought our tickets and took our seats for what proved to be a very entertaining show. It was a series of short sketches, each of which got more elaborate. We could barely understand a word of the singing, but the over-the-top costumes and acting made it pretty easy to follow each act. Some included well acted battle scenes, but most were comedies.  Daniel and his father were quite entertained to hear what we'd got up to when we arrived home.

Dinner that night was one of our most memorable in China: two big bowls of fresh water crayfish, one in a savoury garlic sauce, and another in a fiery Sichuan broth.  After dinner, Daniel even pulled out some frozen Cordyceps caterpillars to make tea for us with. I'd seen people selling them all over Nepal and the Tibetan parts of China, but never thought I'd actually consume one of the dusty-tasting creatures, that the Chinese believe bestow a vast array of health benefits.

On our final morning in Chongqing we bid farewell to our great host Daniel and his dad.  One more meal of Xiao Mian, some shopping for train snacks and drinks and it was all aboard for our final train journey of the trip, bound for Beijing.

Thirty surprisingly quiet hours later we arrived at Beijing east railway station and made our way to Sarah's friend Amy's home. Amy was actually away on holiday, but had very kindly offered us the use of her apartment while we were in town.

This was a great luxury, but also made me feel a bit nervous, as without her we wouldn't have access to the documents required to register our stay with the local police.  (Hotels normally do this for their guests, but if you're staying in a private residence you need to do it yourself.)

My concerns ended up being unfounded, and we had a very relaxing last couple of days in Beijing. 

These largely revolved around food and drink.  Lots of yummy Jian Bing and lots of yummy beer too.

We spent a whole afternoon and evening checking out the neighbourhood's brewpubs.  We made it to (three? I think? Or was it four?) and mostly enjoyed the beers, especially at Great Leap Brewing's second location.

Our one bit of sightseeing was on our final day in Beijing, when we finally made it to the National Museum.  It had been closed for renovations on our 2011-12 visit, and we'd missed it on our first stay this time as you need your passport for admission and Sarah's had been at the Mongolian embassy until the day we left.

The museum was even heavier on party propaganda than most government run museums. But the architecture of the place was truly grandiose, and there were some fun elements to it. Most notably was the collection of gifts given to Chinese premiers and Chairmen by various world leaders. These ranged from tastefully beautiful (few and far between) all the way up to ridiculously, over-the-top garish.  Even these almost invariably showed great artistic skill. A couple o favourites were the a painter relief plate of Ulugh Beh (an Uzbek astronomer) presented to Li Peng by (unsurprisingly) the Uzbek foreign minister and, the piece de resistance of the whole exhibition, two lifesize ceramic swans presented by Richard Nixon to Mao himself.

It felt a bit odd to be heading to the airport on the day of our departure. I was still feeling a bit nervous about the fact that we'd not properly registered our accommodation for five of our last six nights in the country. And save for eating one last delicious Chinese meal, we didn't have much to do with the day, so we headed off to the airport early.

As noted before, there were actually no problems with our departure, so after a bit of hanging out at Beijing airport we were winging our way home for a brief revisitation of familiar friends and places before setting out on our next adventure.

Back in Beijing

Sarah and I had been planning an overseas trip since before started walking Te Araroa.

So when we found super cheap flights to the country that I often choose as my favourite to travel in when pressed, that sorted out what the first leg of our journey was to be.

We arrived in Beijing at around 22:15 and after a long wait in the immigration lineup, managed to just squeak on to the last bus headed to our part of town.

We spent a total of six days in Beijing, doing a mix of things that included visiting old favourites, exploring new areas, meeting up with friends and dealing with travel administration.

This last took the form of getting Sarah a visa for Mongolia (Canadians don't require one, but Kiwis do.) The fact that it's a four working-day process and that we arrived on Friday night kind of enforced the minimum length of our stay in the city.

Other administration involved planning out the coming week or so of our travels.  It's interesting that this being our first big overseas trip with a smart phone and constant internet and GPS access makes it really easy to plan things.  On the down side, this compelled me to try and plan everything and to be disappointed and stressed every time any wrinkles or problems emerged.  It took a few days, but I think I've now got over this and am happy to have more information, but to still be willing to live with uncertainty or imperfection sometimes.

The old favourites included wandering the hutongs (ancient neighbourhoods made up of courtyard homes, labyrinthine alleys and all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies).  Also included was a visit to Ritan Park where Beijingers go to meet, relax and practice every imaginable hobby from table tennis to bullwhip cracking to hiphop dancing to signing traditional Chinese music to rock climbing.  And a wander around lake Houhai with its attendant tourist traps (primarily aimed at Chinese tourists). 

One of the best old faves was the Workers' Cultural Palace next door to the Forbidden City.  It was formerly the emperors' temple for worship of their ancestors, so it's very similar architecurally to its big (about 8 times the size) brother next door.  And more importantly, where the Forbidden City is loud, crowded and somewhat chaotic, the gardens and temples next door are an oasis of peace and calm.  We had it almost to ourselves, save for fifteen or twenty couples having their wedding photos taken!

New included a few highlights and a bit of a lowlight. 

The lowlight came when we went way out into the city's southeast in search of a gallery specialising in art from Mansudae, North Korea's national art "factory." We took a (necessarily) long route around a massive unfinished housing development, along a kilometre of muddy road with no sidewalk at all, stopped for some rather expensive and decidedly mediocre noodles featuring tubes of bright pink meat-esque substance that tasted vaguely like burnt plastic, had a rather fun walk through a wholesale food market before finally making it to the place.  And finding it closed.  Fortunately we also learned that walking from the nearest subway station was not the easiest route and ended up taking a bus home with only minimal navigational trouble.

Very amusingly, during one of the highlights, an exploration of the 798 Art District, we found another Mansudae gallery almost by accident. (798 was pretty cool.  It was a collection of contemporary Chinese art galleries in an old communist era factory complex.  The experience was only mildly dampened by the facts that A. It was never quite clear whether a gallery was welcoming visitors and B. It had become popular enough that an awful lot of space was taken up by expensive cafes and restaurants.  One particularly memorable gallery was the Cow Park Parade.  Lots of Cow themed art.  Interpretive displays lauding the positive qualities of cows (with particular reference to Chinese communism and nationalism). And a further displays laying out their plans for world domination. I had no idea what to make of it and still don't.

We also spent some time with an old friend of Sarah's, Amy.  We got to meet her daughter Ngaia (I quite like that name).  We also shared an absolutely fabulous dinner (including Peking duck, Sichuan fish, dry fried spicy beans and salty-sour julienned potatoes.) We also tried some of the products of Beijing's booming craft brewery scene with her (and later without her.)

The beers we tried were almost uniformly faultless and often interesting.  The only real negative was that a lot of them were a bit unbalanced towards sweet.  The pick of the bunch came from Great Leap Brewing.  We finally after four tries back in late 2011 early 2012 made it to their original hutong brewpub and enjoyed a few pints there (including a great chili stout called Pianos Filled With Flames).  This was another illustration of the difference a smartphone can make as, instead of wandering the hutongs for 40 minutes each time we wanted to find the place, this time we just walked straight there guided by the GPS and offline maps.

Aside from the great meal with Amy we did lots of other good eating, including a daily jian bing (Beijing's special breakfast crepe) and many delights from tiny local restaurants near our hotel.  Chive pancakes, noodles with veggies in chili oil, pork dumplings, soy milk, sesame and chili noodles with tofu skin, vinegar-y spinach with peanuts...

On our final afternoon in Beijing we picked up Sarah's visa (all good, no problems, Hurrah!)

After this we spent a while visiting the Dongyue Temple nearby.  This was pretty, but most memorable for its seventy three halls, each containing five to ten life sized figures each representing a different "department" in charge of the affairs of the world and afterlife.  Many of these focussed on obvious things (ensuring that people don't cheat or commit fraud, preserving the natural world.)  But I especially loved the large number of them that dealt with simple heavenly bureaucracy (e.g. the department in charge of cross-checking the conclusions of the good life tribunal, the department in charge of signing the documents prepared by the department next door, etc. etc.)

After the temple we carried on with another short walk to the train station.

The queues were more organized (or should I say more existent) than I remembered, so we had little trouble picking up our tickets (ordered online, also a new development, though one I probably won't make use of much more as the fee is a bit steep and buying them at the stations is more fun and gives a sense of accomplishment.  We just needed to do it this time because you can't pick up tickets without your passport and we were worried that the train we wanted would be sold out by the time Sarah had hers back [as, indeed it was.])

The rest of the evening was spent sitting out in the square in front of the station with hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese doing just what we were: waiting for their trains and passing the time.  It was really very pleasant, as the weather was beautiful, we had plenty to read, and we had occasional friendly locals to talk/make hand gestures to/be photographed with.

After a very slight delay we boarded our train to Datong, giddily excited at the memory of how much fun train travel in China can be.  Not that we had too long g to enjoy it, as very soon after departure we (and just about everyone else input car) were fast asleep in our cozy top bunks.