Goodbye to the Yangtze River - hello to one of the biggest cities in the world

I think that somehow Mother Nature knew that this morning was my last morning on the Victoria Jenna and on the Yangtze River, so she tried to make it a bit special.  When I woke up this morning the sun was actually trying hard to put in an appearance.

I had breakfast while enjoying the last couple of hours of my Yangtze River cruise before we pulled up to the dock at our last stop - Chongqing.

Getting ready to load up for Victoria Jenna's next voyage

Chongqing is a mountain city that clings to steep cliffs located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers, and is about 1,800 kms west of Shanghai.  In 1997 Chongqing was formally established by China's central government as the nation's fourth directly-administered municipality (the other three are Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, and Chongqing is the only one in inland China).  As a consequence, Chongqing now administers a sprawling area of 82,365 sq kilometres with a total population of nearly 34,000,000 people!

"Chongqing" means "Double Celebration".  The name was first conferred on the city during the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279) by Zhao Dun in commemoration of the fact that he was first made prince and later crowned emperor here.  The history of the city far precedes its current name however.  The city's origins date back over 3,000 years ago and it is known to have served as the capital of the ancient Ba Kingdom before that kingdom fell to the expanding Qin state in 316 BC.

We didn't really spend any time in the city of Chongqing itself, but instead we spent a few hours in Ciqikou.  Ciqikou (which means "Porcelain Port") is an ancient town within Chongqing, originally called Longyinshen, and also known as Little Chongqing.  The name of the town can be traced back to porcelain production during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644-1912) Dynasties. Formerly a busy port located at the lower reaches of the Jialing River, a thousand years after its foundation the town remains a symbol and microcosm of old Chongqing.

According to historical records, Ciqikou was first built during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song (998 - 1004).  It gained prominence during the Ming Dynasty as a commercial port and market town, shipping goods both by land and water.  Reaching its climax during the end of the Qing Dynasty, the town has been described poetically: in Ciqikou, as "one thousand people greet each other during day ... ten thousand lamps flicker at night".
Although Ciqikou is being promoted as a tourist destination, it really is locals who throng to Ciqikou's steep and narrow pedestrian streets.  Shops sell porcelain, food, handicrafts and gifts, while restaurants and tea shops give a glimpse at what many areas of Chongqing were like before the metropolis became the vast urban agglomeration it is today.  

 Making noodles

 I have never seen candy-floss / fairy-floss done up as elaborately as this before!

 I'm not sure who was enjoying it more - me watching him or him watching me, and not sure if he wanted to have his photo taken or not.

 An interesting use for beer bottles.

A 1,500-year-old Buddhist temple (Bao Lun temple) is located in the middle of Ciqikou.

After spending a couple of hours wandering the narrow streets of Ciqikou and taking in all I could, I bordered a bus for what was about a 4.5 hour drive, north and west, from Chongqing to Chengdu.

As I am apt to do, these are just a little sampling of what the countryside was like:

 A toll station along the highway

with a pretty modern service station along the highway (minus sit-down toilets of course).

Chengdu was my destination today, a city of just over 14 million people.  Really though, I'm not spending much time in Chengdu at all --- in fact I'm here for one specific reason and you'll have to wait until the next blog post to find out what that is.

This was the view from my hotel window:

and I quite liked the double umbrellas that were very much the norm on the scooters here.

And a little bit of trivia for you --- just in case you haven't read enough on my blog posts.  In 2008, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck causing damage to the area, killing about 80,000 people and injuring over 25,000.  Many of the casualties and most of the property damage occurred very close to Chengdu and yet, although only 75 kilometres from the epicentre, Chengdu itself did not suffer any discernible damage.  The buildings in Chengdu were built to earthquake specification, and most buildings there remained intact.  

Tonight we had the option of going to another performance and of course I was keen to go.  Tonight's performance featured excerpts from Sichuan opera:

there was a musician playing an erhu:

and I saw another Changing Faces performer.  Bian Lian (literally "Face-Changing") is an ancient Chinese dramatic art that is part of the more general Sichuan opera.  Performers wear brightly coloured costumes and move to quick, dramatic music.  They also wear vividly coloured masks, typically depicting well known characters from the opera, which they change from one face to another almost instantaneously with the swipe of a fan, a movement of the head, or wave of the hand.  The secret for how to accomplish it has been passed down from one generation to the next within families.  Traditionally only males were permitted to learn Bian Lian, the theory being that women do not stay within the family and would marry out, increasing the risk the secret would be passed to another family.  Historically, Bian Lian had rarely been seen outside of China because non-Chinese were not permitted to learn the art form, but since the mid-2000s it has been performed occasionally in international mass media and at Chinese themed events
It was amazing watching the performer tonight - I totally could not see it at all when he changed from one mask to the next.

Today felt like a long day of travel but then, after relaxing on the river cruise for the previous three days, doing just about anything would probably leave me feeling tired.  I'm really looking forward to tomorrow though ... stay tuned!