April 17, Tuesday

April 17, Tuesday

Up at 7 am.  Bags at door for 7:30.  Down for breakfast.  Check out and on the bus by 8:45.   We drive to the east of Chengdu to the new train station.  We are VIPs today (Big Potatoes according to the Chinese) and get on a first class car on the high speed train to Chongqing (196 km / hr).  It only takes 2 hours to cover approximately 330 km on the “He Xie” (和谐) bullet train.

  Chengdu East Train Station

   Our hostess on this trip
 Our private first class coach.
 Scenes along the way to Chongqing
 Flooded rice fields

Amazing old bridges and green farm lands

 This in in our coach, showing our currant speed and outside temperature.

 
 beautiful fields and they are building more bridges above the valley for trains or cars.
 We cross a huge river along the way.  Could be the Yantze River.
 Arriving in Chongqing
Chongqing is located on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. It is the largest industrial centre in Southwest China and is known as “The Mountain City”.   “As of November 2010, the municipality of Chongqing had a population of 28,846,200, although the urbanized area is estimated to have a population of only 6 or 7 million.”   Reminder that the entire population of Canada was 34,108,752 in 2010. Mind boggling !

 Some buildings have a distinctive European aspect.
 Large condo buildings everywhere.  You will note that even these have laundry hanging on the balconies; that is because clothes dryers use up a lot of electricity, which is very expensive in China (as well as in Hong Kong if you remember the pictures).
 A wholesale market area

Mr Wu, our local guide, is waiting for us at the station and leads to our bus.  Our first order of business is to go to a restaurant for lunch.  Again a Lazy-Susan on the table with at least 10 different dishes in front of us to choose from.   Beer is considered a “soft” drink here and most people opt for that rather than coke or sprite (the regular choices we are offered).   After our meal we walk around a big city block looking at flower stores and garden centres with beautiful vases of all shapes and sizes for sale.
 Turtles and snales for sale
 These turtles look like they were around when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
 Bonsai trees for sale
 Beautiful flowers on a huge tree; they look like lady slippers.
 Kit posing with some vases to give this photo some perspective and show how huge some of the vases are.  One just behind her towers above.
  Orchids in a flower store.

We are then driven to the older part of Chongqing to visit the local farmers’ market.  

 Crossing the Jialing River;  water levels are extremely low.

 
Meat of all types hanging from hooks, poultry that has been fleshly plucked, eggs of all sizes and colours from hens, ducks and geese. Fish, frogs, eels and turtles kept alive for sale. On the second floor are vegetables and fruits so big they defy our normal North American standards.
   Meats; poultry and fish are in a seperate area
 Fresh baby eels anyone?  Or are they some type of huge water worm?
 Mushrooms of all shapes, colours and sizes
 Lotus root;  usually served pickled
 The vegetable section on the 2nd floor
 Duck, chicken and quail eggs.
 No idea what this is; looks like a giant tusk
  Is this a cucumber or a squash?  It is huge !
The smells in each area are also quite interesting and we all questioned the cleanliness of the soles of our shoes by the time we walked out of there.  Where is that disinfectant puddle of water when you need it?   {Back in Africa at the Botswana border near Chobe Park.}

From there we walk to the central part of the city where Jiefangbei Square is located;  a huge plaza also known as “Red Square”.   One one side is the Three Gorges Dam Museum, which we get to visit.

 Three Gorges Dam Museum

  Jiefangbei Square also known as “Red Square” because of the marble tiles.   

I love the fact that I am free to roam on my own in the museum, founded in 1951. The new building opened in 2005 and contains 45,100 square meters of space over 4 floors. There are over 170,000 items in their collection including chinaware, bronze pieces, paintings, calligraphy and jade. I have time to take in the following sections: Three Gorges Ancient Ba Yu, Art Sculpture of the Han Dynasty, Porcelain of Different Dynasties and a temporary exhibit on the first floor.

 The impressive lobby of the Museum
  Old and new compliment each other in this architecture
 “The Waterfall stone was saved before the flooding. It originally stood at the Wu Gate. Natural erosion caused its weathered look, like a waterfall cascading down a mountain.”
 New statues depicting the history of the region.  The one above shows the men who used to pull the boats up past the rapids in the rivers.  The one below is simply beautiful in its imagery.

There was an entire rebuilt village, one of the ones that disappeared when the Three Gorges Dam was built and the rivers were flooded.   Although the Three Gorges Dam project flooded certain areas, the draining of the lower reaches of the river has uncovered many artifacts, now stored in the Three Gorges Museum. This part of the museum, dedicated to the Three Gorges project, contained many new beautiful statues depicting the changes through history
  but the most ironic was this one of people “happily”being relocated.
The creation of the dam and flooding of the Yantze river and other tributaries resulted in the “resettlement of a million people.The Three Gorges, a generic term for Qutang Gorge, Wu Gorge and Xiling Gorge, is a shining pearl along the Yangtze River stretches from Fengjie county of Chongqing to the west and to Yichang city of Hubei Province to the east with a total span of approximately 192 kilometers.”

I then visited a section devoted to the ancient Ba People, the first culture in the Chongqing region and  followed that up with sculptural art of the Han Dynasty, most of which were used as tomb ornaments.

 Beautiful bronze pieces
 Clay cups unearthed at one of the burial sites, ingineously displayed.    Close up of one of the cups.


  Ornate bronze hinge
   and bronze bells, a musical instrument
 Check out the animal heads holding the bar on which the bells hang.
  Pottery horse and wagon wheels
 Bronze doors in a portion of the museum which was closed
Then I went to view some wall paintings and calligraphy.   
 Beautiful painting of the Potala Palace in Tibet

  Mogao caves in Dunhuang,Turpan or Urumqi region, North west China on the silk route.  This was one of the areas of China I wanted to go visit but it wasn't part of the tour and it would have been difficult to go by myself.

On one side of the Plaza is the Three Gorges Museum and on the other a fairly recent building, the People’s Assembly Hall (Chongqing People's Great Hall ) built in the style of the Forbidden City buildings, with a Temple of Heaven dome on top.   This audience hall was built for political party meetings, but is now used as a theater for plays, ballets and concerts.

 The main gates in Jiefangbei Square (Red Square)

   A view of the People’s Hall, through the gate
 The People's Hall, as seen from the museum entrance




 Two little kids running in the square.  Check out the little boy's sleeve covers.  These appear to be very popular so that you don't wash the coat as often, just the sleeve covers.


 Amazing statue in the square.
 and another one of "Mother and Child"
  "Lost in translation" sign at the entrance to the Hall
  The inside of the Hall
  A painting gallery within the Hall, where you can buy the original paintings, or a print.

That was it for our visit; the only thing left to do was to eat dinner and head for the cruise ship “President Prime”.   There was just a slight problem, Mr Wu received a phone call informing him that the restaurant, where we were supposed to eat,  had “an industrial accident” that afternoon, it actually BLEW UP !   Thank God we weren’t there at the time.   So we ended up going back to the same restaurant where we had eaten lunch and then headed out to the ship.  

Chongqing has 2 rivers running through it, the Yangtze and the Jialing River.   Chongqing, with over 100 days of fog per year, is also known as the "Fog City".   The ship was anchored in the middle of the Yangtze River and we had to get to it via a series of platforms sitting on pontoons; an experience in itself.  I was glad I didn’t have to carry anything more than my purse since it was a considerable distance.

 Walking the planks across pontoons, towards our ship

Also got some great shots of the city buildings, all lit up for the night.

 
   Our ship, “President Prime”.  
  Once we were on the boat, in the dining room, waiting for our room assignments, we watched "dinner cruise" ships go by.

Wendy and I are sharing a room while we are onboard and we have managed to give ourselves room to maneuver around the suitcases (since the closets are smelly and neither of us want to use them). 

There are 6 decks on the ship and the room I share with Wendy is on the 3^rd along with everyone else from our group.  We will be cruising a total of 1,400 km “through the heart of China along the world’s third longest river”.    The dining room and reception desk is located on the 2^nd floor.  We enter and exit the ship on the 1rst floor (so the levels which are underwater are not numbered and cannot be accessed by passengers.    Level 4 and 5 are all staterooms.  Level 6 is the lounge and open upper deck.