2020 Yangtze River Cruise and Ferry Starting from 79 USD p.p.!
ChongQing Introduction
The "Mountain City" of
Chongqing clings to steep cliffs at the confluence
of the Yangtze and a major
tributary, the Jialing River. This bustling
city rises high above docks held in the rushing
currents by cables lashed to anchor holes cut
into the rocky shore. Cable cars glide across
to opposite banks and giant bridges carry creeping
waves of trucks loaded with the city's varied
industrial output. Caves perforate the steep
hills, once built as bomb shelters and now busy
as garages or naturally cool restaurants and
hair salons.
For centuries the main commercial
and transportation centre for Sichuan Province,
Chongqing is now under rapid transformation
due to the construction of the Three Gorges
Dam. The city was granted national status in
l996 as a municipal region similar to Bejing,
Shanghai and Tianjin with an administrative
region that includes the eastern Sichuan counties
downriver for a total population of some 30
million people. Chongqing is now proud to be
the world's largest metropolitan region.
This area will bear the brunt and
possible benefits of inundation by the world's
largest dam that will
displace over 1.3 million people. Chongqing
is in the midst of vast reconstruction, demolishing
many old neighborhoods that had previously been
bombed by the Japanese and reconstructed into
the traditional ramshackle warrens laced with
sandstone staircases. These squalid conditions
gave close quarters to the city residents, who
are known for their cheerful pleasure in sitting
outside on cool summer nights. The folk cuisine
of outdoor sidewalk dining is from huo guo or
hot pots. These are basins fi1led with bubbling
chili oil and huajiao--flower pepper that causes
the mouth to tingle, into which are dipped all
kinds of meats and vegetables.
Once the river boatmen's campfire
meal of leftovers from the day's market, hotpot(huo
guo) is now the local favorite, sometimes because
opium pods are placed in the brew.
The traditional lifestyle of Chongqing
is being transformed by giant shopping and residential
construction
complexes that all but eliminate the spicy street
life into glitzy boutiques for the parade of
newly flush consumers. The centre of town is
the Jie Fang Be-a modern tower built to memorialize
the martyrs of the civil war----now covered
with gaudy advertising. The city is plagued
by the worst air pollution in China as industry
and traffic jams spew toxins into the humid
still air of this landlocked port. The dam project
has initiated construction of massive new walls
along the river shores with express highways
on top to alleviate the thick crawl of
traffic through town.
Hundreds of ships line the muddy
banks below the remaining old city wall at Chao
Tian Men--rusty ferries packed with commuters
and barges heaped with goods plying the Three
Gorges to the rest of China. Chongqing is the
destination for most of the bulk transport that
passes through the Gorges, which has been likened
to an eyedropper that feeds the elephant of
the most populous region of Sichuan. The port
bustle is impressive and sweat-soaked. Thousands
of porters known as the bang bang jun--the help
army--line up with their bamboo poles and ropes
to carry supplies up the staircases. These cheerful
troops, some 200,000 on any given day, are farmers
on leave from the season in the fields to earn
cash in the city. Many also work on the construction
sites, camping in the muddy disarray of the
crowded city. Compared to the relatively clean
and urbane cities of China's capital and coast,
Chongqing is quite tu--earthy and real.
• ChongQing Introduction
• History
Of ChongQing
• What
TO See In ChongQing
• Sights
Arourd ChongQing
• The
Bombing of ChongQing
Dazu Rock Cavings A
Dazu Rock Cavings B
Dazu Rock Cavings C
Dazu Rock Cavings D