The great loop of China - April 2018 - Page 6

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.

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.

This is the outside of Chongqing North station, but as I explained above, it is the south square not the north square where I needed to be. Was there a tunnel connecting both sides? No. Was there a subway station at the North square where the vast majority of people want to go? No.

After an epic bag dragging struggle I arrived at the North square with a few minutes to spare.

Now for some views from the train window, the first half was mountainous, with towns perched on the mountains. I say towns, I googled one nice looking town and it had a population of 870,000 people.

Particularly good view, very clear skies in this part of the world.

The second half of the journey has been very flat so far, with an inland sea of farm land, all very green. A bit more pollution came back.

Here is where I surfaced. Staring straight at the door of my hotel. I was impressed by my luck.

This is undoubtedly the nicest hotel I have had yet on this trip, and probably any trip since I last came to China, hotels are great value here.

This one also has a full kitchen, washer/dryer, and the largest shower I have ever seen.

I set out immediately on a long walk, I am feeling a little better, and had a lot of steps to get to meet my daily quota. First I decided to visit the Ming vase shop. If you live in Australia, you have probably seen this shop, it suddenly appears in a condemned building, seems to be open 24 hours a day 7 days a week, seems to be a front for some other kind of business because they never ever get a customer, then it just disappears. It is exactly the same story in China.

Walking around here was very easy, no cars, huge footpaths, nice trees. All very likable so far. When I booked this trip I wasnt sure which city would be the winner for 'least developed', Wuhan or Zhengzhou, so far I would have to say definitely Zhengzhou.

Here is a random art sculpture in the fading light.

Once again, if you live in Australia, approaching any holiday you will know that temporary crowd control needs to be erected around pandora shops because of Chinese girls. This PanOOra. I am wondering if its the same thing, or a very popular knock off brazenly advertising with a marquee in the main pedestrian street.

Dogs were not popular in Chongqing or Xian. They are very popular in Wuhan. Out the front of most malls the dog parade was on, with all the ridiculously decorated dogs being shown by their owners looking for praise.

I found an unclean part! The rubbish bins. This was outside a huge standing only food stadium arena dome. Those are full of sticks that used to have pierced creatures on them.

Here is an example of the European influence, this used to be a customs inspection centre.

Now its for brides in fetching dirty off brown dresses to pose in front of with cardboard gold crowns.

On one side of the road, not pictured, is old falling down multi level tin and rubble poor people housing. Rising from the ashes of a demolished suburb, these huge apartment buildings. Fantastic location, if I lived in Wuhan, it would probably be in one of these. I have noticed that in China the new apartment buildings seem to have more space between them than those that we are building in Australia. You would think in China they would stack them closely together.

I thought Jeans West was an Australian brand? Checking wikipedia, 'Jeanswest is an Australian clothing apparel chain store that is owned and operated by Hong Kong company Glorious Sun'. All hail Glorious Sun and their multi level Jeans West store in thematic cube located in Wuhan China.

Part of the main pedestrian street, this is the non busy end.

There were lots of people on stilts doing things, this guys is playing rock paper scissors with children.

Looks like London or Paris.

Pedestrian mall, busy end.

As well as clowns on stilts, there were probably 5 giant transformers advertising out the front of stores. China loves giant robots.

I wasnt going to get into a real restaurant, and I didnt want to stand and eat things off of sticks, so into a mall I went and found the Old fashioned home style Hong Kong diner for some roast pork and frozen vegetables. It is actually delicious, we have the same in Australia. It was about $3, the pork seemed to be very good quality.

Now for the three mall pics, this is the mall where on basement level two I found 50 restaurants and decided on Hong Kong diner food.

This is a random much larger mall I passed on my walk home which followed the elevated monorail.

And finally, this is my hotel, built on top of a mall. There is a door from the 9th level of the mall into the lobby of my hotel. So if you come to Wuhan you can stay here and never go outside, theres at least 30 restaurants and cafes in the mall including what looked like a flash ramen bar.

To start the day I crossed a river looking for a subway station, I found one, it was the wrong one, another line not yet shown on the map. Wuhan's subway system is extensive, some of the lines travel over 50km out into the countryside.

After a couple of quick transfers I arrived at scenic area 1 of the great east lake. The scenic areas normally cost money, but I think for May day everything is free! I celebrated by having an ice cream.

The first attraction was a mini pirate ship and fairy village. I plundered for a while.

Some areas of the park had these nice red trees to examine, in spring. Are they going red now or are they always red? I dont know, Japan is offended if reading this, because Japan owns both red leaves and blossoms, any other countries attempt at having nice versions of either is to be met by the imperial navy.

The lake, like many in China, is divided into lots of mini lakes by artificial dirt causeways lined with trees, and then concrete 'floating' walkways like this. I was grateful for the trees thats for sure.

A brave para-sailer trusting a Chinese parachute. Also if you go for a ride on one of those junks they make you put on a life jacket. I found that interesting, just as when you go on a long distance bus a guy comes on and checks you have your seat belt done up. Neither would be enforced in Australia.

There are numerous temples around the place, Wuhan is where Sun Yat-Sen started the uprising against the Qing dynasty - Chinas last dynasty. Many things are called 'First revolution' (ShouYi). I assume thats old sunny-boy in the statue.

I found a really nice looking bakery inside the park so decided to stop for an early lunch. There were also numerous KFC kiosks selling ice cream and coffee! My rather large sandwich was very delicious.

This temple and pond had a lady practicing opera, western style opera in Italian. She was very good.

Outside of garden scenic area 1 is Ocean Park. I did not go in.

Enjoy part of the lake, a bridge, part of the Wuhan skyline.

The roads were lined with wonderful shade producing trees.

I couldnt believe how green everything was. This is a wetland park that has an elevated walkway going through it. The water is all very clear.

About a kilometre of roses lined one of the banks.

No longer in the wetlands, we are now in flower island park area. There were many islands filled with flowers.

My eventual destination was those hills and the towers on top of them, fun times ahead.

Getting to the top of the hills required going through some tunnels, I enjoyed my time in the tunnels, where it was much cooler.

I had walked all the way along there, and had a great time doing it. If you told me to do it again tomorrow, I would be happy. I already have my plan for tomorrow though.

Look how hot I am! In every sense of the word. My shirt was dripping wet. My sweat is oily, probably red oil from Chongqing.

Just like the great wall you can go down via toboggan track. Just like the great wall, I did not.

Here is the temple that I showed in the distance on the hill earlier. I had climbed up around the back of the hill so entered via the rear entrance.

The lower levels have an hourly musical performance of Chinese opera with the peacock dance and jade selling ceremony. I decided I could not hang around for that.

Time for a bit of view from the top, strange blinding grey light!

The view in the other direction, I would go out that way.

More things to explore in the lake, I went through none of these areas.

Last one of the view, down there is a world famous botanical garden, I read about it on the bus ride home, I did not get to see that either! There is a botanical garden within the lake garden scenic area.

I went out the front entrance of the temple tower and down lots of steps. I had to stay here for ages to take a photo where I wasnt epically upskirting Chinese girls. In the age of #metoo even an accidental photo will get you 20 years jail.

Lots of steps down, very high quality park, nice trees.

I thought I would just follow this road to the exit gate with not much more to see.

But then there was a lot more to see, lots ponds, sakura forest, bridges.

There were heaps of areas just like this one to sit and get in the way of the photo taking people.

Here is one of numerous lotus ponds, I think I am slightly too early. Perhaps in Hangzhou which is famous for the huge sea of lotus whatevers, they will be in full bloom. I know a lot about flowers since coming to China.

And finally, this is where I got off the bus and had to find a subway station. Due to the construction this was a maze of emergency exits, through a kitchen, through a food court, over a temporary walkway, along a drainage channel, into another food court, through a tent city and finally we came up from under the station some how. I am really glad I know the character for subway (DiTie - 地铁), because it was mostly just hand written temporary signs to follow.

We start this evenings picture presentation with a view through a bridge of the area known as Chu He Han Jie, The chu river and Han street. lots of effort has gone into making it look nice.

All the bridges are covered in lights, which look good, but also prevent me getting a clear shot from the bridge of the river and buildings along the river.

Instead, all the photos feature steel bars.

Girl with many balloons filled with polluting LED lights, batteries and stuffed animal toys.

The pedestrian street between the river and the normal street is very nice. I think its all new, but made to look old, but also shiny.

The Wanda plaza is enormous, pictures wont show its size. Their power bill must be huge, the maintenance on all the lights on the outside must be huge.

Easily the best dog photo I have ever taken. He just knew how to pose for everyone. I had to wait my turn to take a photo.

Tonight was not as busy as last night, I guess tomorrow is a work day and everyone is resting. But it is never the less / none the less / whatever the less, still quite busy.

The apartment buildings around these parts all look very nice.

All the bridges are covered in elaborate decorations.

This is a movie theme park with rides and lots of VR stuff inside, but it received unfavorable reviews so closed down again within months of opening to be re built. Apparently it reopens again soon.

Not just the pedestrian street is nice, not just the Wanda mall is nice, all the surrounding area is nice as well. Its nice to see somewhere so nice. Gives you a nice feeling that all the nice people can experience something nice and nice.

Another shot of the giant mall, mainly because of the cool lights. Each is an individual glass glowing orb that forms a giant animated wrap around screen.

Apparently here you can return all kinds of electronic items to be recycled and get money back out of the machine? I stuck my new cell phone in there and it gave me $8!

I wanted a turn on the giant slot car track but these kids were hogging it. I told them they would be visited by ghosts in their sleep.

For my dinner, noodles in spicy oily sauce with beef. Predictable.

New winner for best Chinglish? I mean it obviously should say 'Normally closed fire door, do not block'. The funniest part is I stuffed up the first pic and went back to take another, by which time 3 groups of Chinese girls were all taking the same photo and giggling. When they saw me coming back smiling, they screamed in terror and ran off laughing.
It makes me wonder how closely all my activities are being watched by inquisitive locals.
What I will now never know because I did not get to ask them is, were they taking the photo so they could post it on wechat with 'white man take photo of sign, how come?' or 'Chinglish is shameful, we need make improve!'. I can speak like that, I am part Chinese, I know thats exactly how they will ask either of those questions.