Chongqing

Chongqing...quite a booming river city. Like the rest of China's cities, it's experiencing a huge influx of people coming in from the country--the whole country is undergoing a massive urbanization movement. So, cities like Chongqing are building hundreds of apartment buildings to compensate for the inflow; and these aren't shanty, poorly built apartments...they're actually very, very nice places to live. But yeah, this was just one thing that we noticed as we traveled around the city. Our hostel was very nice; situated across the street by the Yangzi River and had a hang out room and bar.

That first day we took a city bus to a somewhat touristy village called Simenkou. It was basically alleyways of peddlers selling trinkets and local snacks. We walked around a bit and found a more authentic village behind the scenes. It was raining a bit but still really humid so we were sweating even as we were walking. After getting enough free snack samples we headed back to the hostel and met some people going to "hot pot" for dinner. Every region in China has it's own version of "hot pot" (huo guo in Chinese), but the common factor is that it's spicy. Basically, hot pot is a pot filled with boiling water, chicken broth, and other spices. Then you order raw food and cook it yourself in the pot. The food can be anything from raw vegetables to raw meat. Chinese people like eating in exciting places with lots of noise and movement; so since with hot pot everyone at the table is reaching for food to put in the pot or take out of the pot it's really appealing to Chinese. We had a nice mix of people that night: us 5 Americans, 4 Chinese, and a woman from the Netherlands. After following our new Chinese friend Huhu to the restaurant, we sat down, ordered tons of food and started the festivities. If hot pot is done right, everyone should be sweating while they eat because the food is so spicy. I was definitely sweating. One of the more exciting times of the night was when the waiter brought out small anchovy-size fish, and although the heads were cut off they were still squirming! The amazing thing is that even this nice meal only cost 25 RMB a person (3 bucks). We walked off dinner a bit and looked at the city's night lights.

The next day we took another bus to the city's museum. China is in the process of opening hundreds of new museums, and Chongqing's was not only very new but also free! It had exhibits on the ancient peoples who had lived on the Yangzi River, and also one on the World War II Japanese Resistance Period. Most the exhibits had signs in English, but even those that didn't I could figure out the meaning from some of the characters I could read. Overall, Chongqing was a nice city to hang out in for two days, but it was time to leave and head to our next destination. So, after coming back to the hostel we packed our huge bags again (we were quickly becoming experts in stuffing things into the backpacks) and headed to the train station via taxi to take our 4 hour train to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.