Hello again from Chongqing. Myung and I were here in March of 2009. If you want to see pictures of Chongqing and some of the people we have met here, click on the March 2009 link on the right side of my home page, right to the right of where you are reading now. Of course, other China pictures will be in the surrounding months, if you are interested in that.
Also, I still suggest you click on my Chinese television link to CCTV, the government TV network. Though the news is hard to swallow, there are loads of interesting things on that site, including a program on Chongqing in the “Travelogue” section. Or just Google “CCTV” some other time. Wikipedia on Chongqing is interesting too.
One last thing about communicating, Facebook and YouTube are still blocked here, and likely will remain blocked for the foreseeable future. Anybody who reads this and wishes to contact me through Facebook should email me instead.
Western mouths should just pronounce Chongqing as Chong ching . It was formerly known in the west as Chungking because it’s the home of the fantastic canned delicacies which used to come with a pastry on top of the can you could ladle the contents onto. Just kidding, of course. Chongqing, formerly Chungking, is a city of about 10 million in south central China. It used to be part of eastern Sichuan Province but in 2007 it became the center of a small “municipality” of it’s own. By “small” I mean the municipality has “only” 30 million people. It’s most famous for being the WW II capital of the Kuomintang government, which ruled much of China from 1928 to 1949. There are interesting sites here, for the WW II buffs or if you are interested in this being the place where the southern Song dynasty held out for 32 years against the Mongols in the 13th century. Other than that, there is not much here for the average tourist other than it’s sort of on the way between southern China’s tourist spots and Chengdu, Sichuan, and it’s pandas. Chengdu is about 3-4 hours west of here.
We’re here because we liked Chongqing before and met some friends here. You can see some of them in that March 2009 post. Since then, Pi Pi and Xue Xue have had a little girl. Here are Pi Pi and Myung, then Myung with Xue Xue and her daughter, then Xue Xue’s father, grandmother and daughter.
We’ve met some other people, but I don’t have any good pictures of them. Here’s a bad one I took at a restaurant. There are the usual suspects. To Pi Pi’s right is Lu Lu. He’s been great help to us in getting organized here in this apartment, especially with some internet glitches we had. The two Europeans are an Austrian/Slovakian couple we met in Gyongju. They are now traveling around China and came here to visit and start their Three Gorges river tour from here. Oh yeah, that’s the other reason people come to Chingqing.
We’ve rented an apartment here, right in the middle of the main plaza of one of the districts of Chongqing, called Shapingba. Myung’s thinking about maybe doing some business here, so it’s cheaper to rent a place than to stay in a hotel all the time. If we stay longer, we’ll probably get cheaper digs than this, but this suits us for now. It’s certainly centrally located. Here’s the view out the window and from the plaza below.
Here’s the place inside. It’s newly renovated, but like many things in China, they don’t get it about some of the basics. One thing is they put a western style sit down toilet in, but the shower drain is higher than the middle of the room. Asian bathrooms often don’t separate shower from the toilet/sink area. This I can deal with (reluctantly), but why create a lake? My only guess is that the lake used to be around the squat toilet and one was to push the shower water down that. But the drain on the side surely isn’t new. Who knows? Welcome to China. Also, the walls are new, the place is nicely though minimally furnished, including an HD digital TV, but they didn’t do anything about the microscopic kitchen, with it’s little sink and one burner gas burner.
Oh well, it’ll do for now. We may be getting another place in 2-3 weeks anyway. Here’s the rest of the inside.
Here’s the grub Myung was making. Because of the kitchen situation, prep has to be done on our little table. Here it is served on our little table. Stir-fried black mushrooms with minced pork with garlic oyster sauce, stir fried green beans with maybe the same sauce, I can’t remember, and rice. Fortunately, we have a rice cooker. Myung does almost all of the cooking now. She has skills with the food that’s available here, at least at a areasonable price. This layout cost no more than a dollar. We can both do without my cooking, for the most part.
Here are some shots of the plaza below. For the most part, it’s a six square block pedestrian walkway. We live on the 17th floor of the tall building in the center of this first picture.
The rest of the pictures are of various areas within a couple of blocks.
Underneath all this is underground shopping. This is air conditioned and a nice route to go here and there when it’s 40 degrees (over 100 F.) outside. Usually, under those multistory department stores, malls, office buildings and condos are two basement floors of shops and garages. They build down as well as up.
What are I doing here. Well, I’m enjoying the rest from backpacking. Only in the last week or so does it feel like my body has recovered from the grind. I often wondered if traveling like that would add years to my life or take them away. It’s true I have gotten loads of exercise, a reasonable amount of which was aerobic. And I’ve generally had good nutrition. And I am at peace with where I am in life and have healthy company in Myung. But… I’ve learned my body can only take so much. You see and hear about all kind of older people who can do phenomenal things with their bodies. I’m pretty good for my age, but I can tell I’m going to have to take into consideration what is possible for me. Building up so that I can do what the young guys do doesn’t seem possible in my case. Some things, like my knees especially, are wearing out. My other joints feel the stress, too. There are other things, too, like my balance is even worse than it ever was. I’m thinking, like father like son, I’m going to kill myself in a fall, only I won’t be 93 when it happens. I’m having to be more and more careful not to injure myself rock hopping over creeks or hiking along ledges. Shoot, I’m already the absolute slowest walker down an uneven surface. Anyway, finally my knee and right middle finger are feeling nearly normal after my bicycle mishap on “The World’s Most Dangerous Road” in Bolivia, (and I wasn’t even going that fast, like the extreme riders I was with.) I’m fine with kicking back right now. While myung is doing her thing, I may really try to learn Mandarin and write my memoirs or something.
I guess that about wraps it up for now. Next blog will probably come when we decide what we will do next, if we stay here or go somewhere else. That’ll be in a couple of weeks. Until then, be well, all of you.
