Walking to Erling Park and Testbed 2 in Chongqing
Today I am still sick. I really would like to be not sick tomorrow. Despite being sick, I managed 25,000 steps by 1pm, hiking through the city into Erling Park and then back via the hipster coffee and art gallery area known as Testbed2.
It was also very polluted today, and very hot, and I was sweating huge amounts, drinking huge amounts and taking a tour of every public toilet in Chongqing - all side effects of having a cold.
I have 2 stories to share, I was walking along minding my own business through a neighbourhood market and a small child decided to start kicking me and yelling at me. I could not understand him. He kicked me 3 times, quite hard, and no one did anything about it at all, so I kicked that little bastard square in the face and sent him flying across the footpath. Actually I didnt I fled, I was defeated by a 3 year old angry at white people.
For my next story, I was making one of my many visits to a urinal, standing there making sure my aim is optimal, cleaning lady comes in. Nothing unusual about that in Asian countries. She comes right over to me, leans against the partition thing thats between each urinal, and yells excitedly, Ni shi meiguoren? Which is of course, are you American? So I had to have a chat with an old lady in an orange jump suit and huge plastic sun bonnet while urinating.
First up, I walked through the nice city area, and took photos of hydrangeas. I am an expert on plants, and dancing.
A rubbish bin, a taxi, a tunnel a temple. Exciting.
I scaled this ladder to assault the temple. They were really surprised anyone would do this. There was nothing stopping me from climbing the ladder.
Nice temple, nice plants. There was a lady spinning around with a real sword out the front but she put it away when she saw me so I could not get a photo.
This is the market area where I got assaulted by a small child.
In what is becoming a regular Chongqing event, I walked past the end of a building and suddenly realised how high up I was. Before now I had no idea I was more than a few metres above the rivers. You can see the green spine with the buildings I had walked up the middle of.
In the previous photo I was standing on the start of this bridge, now I walked out along it half way.... then crossed the road in the traffic! When I walked back up the other side I passed a security hut and the guy in it yelled something at me that included the word danger, presumably he watched me cross the traffic on camera. It was very slow moving traffic.
It looks like the end of the world, yet somehow awesome.
Everywhere is huge buildings.
I was getting sun burnt standing out here, time to head back into the shade.
The view up the river the other way.
The slow train Chongqing train station, I think its reclaimed land.
You cant really tell how steep that is, but people do walk down there to get to their homes. So much of Chongqing is like that.
Now I am in Erling park. I went here last time to enjoy the view too, however last time I caught the train here. The view as seen above is actually more impressive outside the park. Inside the park, you can go fishing for turtles.
Thats a different river on the other side of the tall green spine.
I was trying to get down this way, but could not, time to double back!
This took me back past the sacrificial altar. I lay on it for a while but no one did me a favour.
Unexpected!
A fairly boring looking building, but if it really was built in the 1940's its in very good condition.
Eventually I found a road to take me where I wanted to go, people live in this building! I could see clothes hung out to dry on the top level.
This is Testbed2. Built on the site of a crumbling money printing factory, they have deliberately left it crumbling and installed a lot of cafes and art galleries. Chinese girls love to come here with their boyfriends to have their photos taken.
One of the gallery spaces, a few of them were enforcing the no photo rule.
To me, there are lots of crumbling places in Chongqing which would be just as good for photos. I guess some of the buildings had graffiti on them which is a novelty. You can also order an $8 deconstructed coffee here, or hand made liquid nitrogen ice cream etc.
I also took a selfie in Testbed2, I may be doing it wrong.
To end my day out, I descended into this stadium and ran a few laps.
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.