29 April 2018
The crush for the view
Amazing views of the Yangtze river in Chongqing
I said the other night I would have to go out over the bridge once it got dark and take more photos of the Chongqing skyline, so thats exactly what I did. I was not expecting everyone else to be doing the same thing, but they were. This made for an interesting, and at times slightly scary experience.
On my way over to the far side it was ok, I was on the 'wrong' side of the bridge then, and the great crush at this point had not yet started, there was just a semi crush to capture the sunset.
On my way back however, the crush was on. At some point they just shut down all traffic on the bridge and all roads leading on and off the bridge because too many pedestrians were walking in the traffic.
Lines of private security guided by police yelling on megaphones formed human guide ropes to try and make people go in specific directions, but it didnt really work.
People largely just abandoned their cars and stood around nearby looking at the view, for how long I have no idea! I think the people stuck on the bridge fully intended to get stuck there for hours. The buses and cars trapped nearer my hotel however, they were just leaning on the horn non stop. I guess if you are a bus driver and you are told to drive the route anyway, then you have to drive and get stuck in traffic, but any local who decided to drive through this area at this time on a Sunday with a full moon, should surely have known better.
I took way too many pics, I will do my best to cull as many similar photos as I can.
Everyone is selling things in the streets around shopping areas, and as you will see later, everyone is buying too! This woman is selling felt ears, because thats really useful.
Apparently, peppa pig is the most watched television show in China. I have noticed lots of girls have peppa pig backpacks and phone covers, and grown adults buy the balloons.
If you are ever wondering why Maserati / Jaguar / Bentley / Porsche make these hideous SUV's and Ferrari and Lamborghini are following with things that look even more like a Hyundai than this Maserati, then come to China. Everyone is buying a half a million dollar soccer mum truck.
Quite busy here already in the late afternoon sun.
I saw this apple logo in a glass box, but where is the store? Underground. Far far underground. I had no idea this 9 level underground thing was here, but it was quite scary to me to think how far underground I was.
If you get trapped underground you can buy some Chinese lego from a vending machine. Do you think they licensed the disney characters?
There was a very flash bookshop down here that descended further downwards.
This chain store selling these mini sweet baugettes are everywhere around Chongqing. They have the French flag prominently shown, but I doubt the french are into red bean and green tea.
This is Chongqing Mcdonalds, the same brand is everywhere, selling the 5 or so things that Chongqingese eat for every meal. Divide the price by 5 for $AUD. That makes all those things between $1 and $2! Scary.
I settled on a Korean place for dinner, probably the only place that wasnt selling some form of noodles in numbing and spicy sauce. My choice was the Tofu and vegetable stew, and it was delicious, and really quite spicy. I had no idea my meal deal came with that huge drink, I took one sip and decided it had more calories than the entire meal and drank no more.
Fake Gucci. I love the name of the store. By now I was killing time underground waiting for it to start getting dark.
I have no idea what this building is, but it looks out of place.
Time to head out over the bridge. Here are the throngs of people heading back after capturing the great sunset, the sun was bright red, I missed it because I was on the wrong side.
Some of the cruise ships are firing up their neon lights ready for the dinner cruises. We will see one again a bit later.
Slowly the buildings are turning their lights on.
On the far side of the river is the grand theater, so grandly covered in neon LED animated lights - everything is!
Now I am on the far side of the bridge. Rather than cross over in the traffic which was still moving at this point, I decided to walk all the way down the far side and back up the other side of the bridge.
This allowed it to get properly dark. Here is a longer exposure.
And here is the business district on the far side of the bridge that I never visited. Big lit up buildings wherever you look.
Time to head back into town. Short exposure, hand held, therefore noisy. The bridge wasnt totally stable because trains run along underneath where I was standing.
Traffic was at a standstill by now. Notice everyone has bought some useless piece of crap to stick on their heads. Also those clear balloons with the lights in them are popular. They all have batteries containing mercury that will get thrown out in the normal garbage in an hours time.
Heres a lit up boat. And the cave tourist cliff area in the background.
One more, portrait orientation. Because traffic had stopped I was able to make decent progress back over the bridge walking mainly on the road, all that was about to change.
Too many people. All trying to take photos.
Here is a wall of security trying to keep people separated by direction, they were failing.
Me photographing people photographing people photographing the view.
Tomorrow I go to Wuhan. It is far, but for me its even further as I am on a train that takes an hour longer as it stops all stations. The faster express bullet trains sold out seconds after tickets went on sale. My travel tomorrow is about 6 hours and I am still sick right now, very annoying.
Despite being sick basically the entire time I was in Chongqing, I thought it was fantastic, but I also feel I only scratched the surface. There are so many parts of the city to explorer its ridiculous. There are also mountains, some in the city, some 2 hours outside, due to poor health I explored none of them. Guess I will have to come back for a third visit.
Chongqing certainly has a very CHINA!!!! feeling about it, there really are no tourists, the food would be challenging for most people, theres very little English signage.
When I say all that I mean 'for a big city in China' I am not comparing to tier 88 cities in Xinjiang.
I do however remember the last time I was here was quite a bit scarier, it was very dirty, there were dog heads for sale in a few places, there were badly crippled begging for money, serious scooter accidents, the whole place smelt like leaded fuel. All that has changed a lot in the last few years.