The morning markets of Xian
Today I am going to Chongqing, I have been there before, that journey will likely be described in laborious detail below.
For some unknown reason, all the trains to my desired station in Chongqing were canceled, I knew this a month before when I tried to buy a ticket only to find on the day of placing the order the services had vanished. It seems on my exact day of travel, services to Chongqing from Xian are moving from one station to a different brand new station, so many services are cancelled, and buying a ticket was not easy. Therefore I am departing Xian very late, 2:20pm, and making a 5.5 hour journey to Chongqing, but I digress, I will describe that in detail further below. Before that description happens, my late departure meant I had time for one last lap of Xian.
My final lap of the great city of Xian took me around part of the bottom of the great city wall. Not the whole way again, although I would have if I had time!
It was very beautiful, enhanced by the great weather today. I saw all the usual Chinese park life attractions as you will see below.
Before heading to the wall I did a morning stroll through the Muslim quarter and observed sheep and other other creatures still with most of their flesh before they are carved laboriously (word of the day) into small chunks suitable for feeding onto sticks and char grilling. Actually there were a lot of butchers along here carving up entire beasts in the street for all to see, very interesting.
After my lengthy stroll I had just enough time left to return to my hotel and add a bit of charge to my phone in preparation for the 5.5 hour high speed train ride south to the Chongqing megalopolis.
The main muslim food street, surprisingly many things were open quite early. You have to get up pretty early in Xian to not be able to buy parts of a sheep on a stick.
Most of the people living here were airing their captive birds in the sun.
I wonder if these sticks will be sitting here all day in the sun, adding some flavour from the passing smokers and street sweeping machines?
Notice they use fresh sticks, not the machine prepared skewers you would normally expect.
I am really happy with this photo, great light, really captures the street action. All the scooters are electric, theres no such thing as a petrol scooter anymore.
The local recycling man is probably thrilled he found a washing machine or whatever that thing is to collect.
Just one of about 50 butcher shops airing their delicious meats.
Now I start my amble around a quarter of the wall, here is the moat. The moat was nice and did not smell at all. Many people were enjoying the moat.
I once again defeated everyone at ping pong. I am still undefeated.
To celebrate my undoubted ping pong superiority, a new dance has been created in my honour.
Actually its the same dance every grandma group does. I think I know it well now through my detailed and ongoing study of the dancing habits of Chinese citizens. I am writing a book.
The long train journey from Xian to Chongqing
I write this as we finally approach Chongqing West station. Unfortunately this brand new high speed rail station has opened before the metro line to it can be completed, how embarrassing! This means that despite getting in quite late (for me), I will still face another logistical hurdle once I arrive in Chongqing. Now I will describe the train ride from Xian to almost arriving at Chongqing.
When I sat down, the guy next to me was super excited, he had never sat next to a foreigner before, and to quote him 'I hope its ok, I have so many questions for you!!!!'
OK, I will practice Chinese speaking and you can speak to me in English. He was on his way home from work, he does 22 days on 13 off, which actually sounds ok? 5 weeks is only 10 days off for most Australians. Anyway, we chatted about all manner of subjects, culminating in his amazement that the host of Chinese dating show, If you are the one, who we know as Mr Meng, owns Chongqing style noodle shops in Australia.
Actually we didnt get to chat as much as he might have hoped, because all the children from the entire length of the train decided I would be their entertainment. Nearby children were going to fetch other children from other carriages to come and meet me and talk to me. No matter how much me or the guy I was chatting with explained that my name is David (Dawei), all children referred to me only as WaiGuoRen (foreign person). I could understand some of what they would say, Waiguoren looks silly, waiguoren is very funny, waiguoren is drinking tea and not cola, how come? I was clearly a monkey in a zoo.
They especially liked it when I told them to speak slowly and quietly or I will tell their mothers they have been very naughty!
I guess it will be no surprise that my hair was particularly humorous to everyone, and when I took it out of its ever shrinking pony tail and combed it over my face there were guffaws of laughter from everyone, and then more children came wanting to see captain caveman.
Also if you are wondering how old Chinese children think I might be, somewhere between 80 and 90 years old. Children also tell me I look like a pig, my new English speaking friend asked me cautiously if I knew the monkey magic show and the character pigsy... yes, yes I do, and I already knew that I have a pig nose!
Here is the outside of the Xian North station, you can get here on the subway.
I love these photos, whichever station I go to, I look forward to taking one.
Here is the temporary bus departure area at Chongqing west station. The bus staff kept asking me if I was taking the bus because I had lost my money. No, I take the bus for the adventure! And an adventure it was, Chongqing is the mountain city and roads go every which way, under over and through buildings and mountains, in the dark, through much more vibrant streets than anywhere else in China. Its the 30 million people wild west!
Here is my hotel, its a serviced apartment with a full kitchen and washer dryer. I stayed here last time I visited Chongqing, it has an awesome view of a fully animated building that is more than 100 levels high. There are a number of super talls over 100 floors in Chongqing.
Bonus view of hotel room.
Well, as you can see above, I did make it to my hotel, which as stated above, is excellent. The logistics of getting from Chongqing West Station to here involved taking a local bus. The free express bus was not coming for another hour. There were a whole host of people wanting to help me, recognising that the situation was very un friendly if you are not fluent in Mandarin. The bus set up is temporary as the metro will open soon, and the metro will be full of English and be very tourist friendly. Anyway, the bus staff told me what bus, wu ling si, good luck knowing thats 504 if you dont speak Chinese, and that it would come in er shi wu fen zhong (25 minutes). This was after I explained to them I was happy to go to any subway station, which they understood.
To further help me, a young college student carrying home an embroidered clock he had brought back to his home made for him by his mother was insistent that he would guide me the whole way. I really think if I didnt show him the map on my phone and speak a fair bit of Chinese to him about how I had been to China many times and was very familiar with Chongqing and its subways that he would have taken me all the way to my hotel carrying the big elaborately framed embroidered clock.