29 March 2013
Mountain garden
The day looked fairly bright, so it was time to navigate to a nearby mountain.
The one I selected had a world famous botanical garden, I know its world famous because google revealed that old people who do some sort of global botanical garden pilgrimage have it on their list of 10 in the world to visit.
I am not sure it is worth that effort, but I might be missing the significance of the species on offer.
What they do have is a significant formal bonsai garden, and separate areas for plums, cherries, roses, camelias etc.
They also have a massive indoor greenhouse, that is also split into multiple areas such as alpine, desert, tropical etc.
Thats probably more than enough text about gardens, time for stories from the subway/monorail.
All station platforms and the trains themselves have multiple tv screens, normally showing ads, interspersed with something from national geographic channel or funny home videos.
My favourite ad is about this little girl, who grows up with her head wrapped in bandages, unable to see.
Eventually due to the wonders of modern China, a hospital makes her better, and they unwrap the bandages and she can see!
Only then she looks out the window and sees how polluted the world has become, all she sees is chimneys spewing black smoke.
She immediately starts crying and re wraps her face in bandages.
Whilst we are on the topic of wrapping, my favourite funniest home video is also a kind of propoganda.
It features American children un wrapping their xmas presents and throwing a massive tantrum because they didnt get what they want.
Many resort to physical violence against their parents.
Now onto the photos!
Another day, another bus station. This one is in Nanping, a very nice place indeed as we shall see later.
I have now visited all the town centres of Chongqing.
My bus is a mid level bus, which means it costs 2 yuan, instead of 1 or 3. It seems fairly crapppy to me, a manual transmission required for the mountain, but an old style crash gear box. The driver crunches every gear change.
This made for very slow going, which was fine by me as its steep cliffs for most of the journey.
I never did see a pink skyscraper before.
And whilst I have seen gold ones, none as impressive as this twin tower gold monolith.
The entrance to the botanical gardens. It was on the far side of the south mountain (Nan Shan, which literally means south mountain). This means there were no views of the city, and I couldnt really capture any good photos from the bus window.
The park layout is confusing, theres basically no English signage, and the maps they have never really show which way you are facing or the whole park in one image.
As best I can tell, you start at the top, and walk downhill and then back up again to get out.
Inside the impressive greenhouse.
Which features fake waterfalls and cave systems made of concrete.
The indoor highlight for me was the cactus garden. You really have to watch your head in places, as not only will you walk into something, it will be very prickly.
Alternatively, you can climb over the prickly things to carve your name into these less prickly bushes.
Outside the greenhouse is the as expected highly maintained, quite formal Chinese garden.
The park is the go to place for people getting married. Subtracting for my usual exaggeration factor, there were at least 20 couples getting photos taken. Heres 3 in one shot competing for the best spot.
The entrance to the bonsai area.
I like bonsai, the road up the mountain had a number of nurseries specialising in bonsai.
There are also many nice water areas, all in all its a nice place to visit, clear fresh air, and lots of people enjoying themselves. Many people bring elaborate picnics with them and blaring radios in backpacks to accompany them on their peaceful walk with gangnam style.
Back in Nanping now, and the number of great food venues is unbelievable. I settled for a Taiwanese / Sichuan fusion place, which was amazing. First up was chilli and cucumber, my favourite side dish.
Followed by the spicy fusion noodle soup, which is Taiwanese beef noodle with added sichuan peppers and peanuts. 10 out of 10!
The Nanping area is 'finished' and seems to be for wealthier younger people to live in apartments directly above the extensive shopping, dining, cinema area. Its also on the monorail line that connects the airport with the high speed rail terminal.
Note to self, if I ever have to live in Chongqing, live in Nanping.
Second note to self, unintentional bad art.
The apartments are of high quality.
The shopping is underground, as are the nicer restaurants. This on the left is Wanda Plaza, which seems to go forever underground, I never got to the bottom of it.
Finally on the way back, you cross the mighty Yangtze river, whos scale is not properly illustrated in photographs.