Although I’ve already professed my love for this city in a previous post, I figure it still deserves a more detailed treatment as the sixth installment of my oh-so-spiffy Travel Journals. So, here it goes:
The Chongqing area, at first sight, seems to be one of those nightmarish industrial landscapes that China is unfortunately quite famous for. Miles of blighted brown farmland, clusters of drab, dirty concrete block tenements randomly strewn about among the highway interchanges- and all of this stewing in a rather heavy smog.
The area seems to be awash in industry, OLD industry. Many of the factories (functioning, abandoning or decaying, I could never tell) were all brownbrick and coal smokestacks, haphazardly built on hills in a scene that made me wonder whether I had arrived in Industrial Revolution England.
Arriving in the city proper, we are dropped at some massive, chaotic bus station that seems to sprawl over three hills/sections, all of it outdoors. Rickety looking apartment blocks jut out of the landscape as far as the eye can see. I also quickly realize that, as promised, bicycles are completely absent from this urban area (too many hills). Instead, the streets are clogged with belching buses, two of which get into an accident right in front of our cab as we leave the bus ‘depot’.
After the relative calm and serenity of Yunnan (even Sichuan to a certain degree), this place was chaos; overcrowded, 50s style industrial chaos. We were leaving the Southwest behind, and ploughing head on into the great hinterland of China.
So I’m sure you are now asking: “what in god’s name did you find appealing about this place?!?” And I would answer two things: originality and energy. Ok, I will get it out of the way: Chongqing is chaotic, overcrowded and overwhelmingly polluted. However, as someone interested in cities and urban scenes, I found it to be one of the more unique urban landscapes I have experienced.
Perhaps the main reason is the congestion. Chonqging is an exercise in density, a Chinese Manhattan crammed onto a small, hilly peninsula. Many other Chinese cities, despite having populations in the untold millions, can come across as strangely spacious: huge public squares, boulevard so wide you can barely see the other side. Not so in “The Chong”. It seems the driving thrust of urban planning here is to cram as many highrises as possible into the least amount of space. And I’m not talking about empty luxury condo towers that sit empty in the name of speculation; these giants looked packed to the brim, with laundry hanging out every window from floor one to fifty. This is perhaps the first urban scene in China that has truly made me pause and realize just how many people live in this country. Sorry Shanghai, you lose.
The fact that Chongqing is built on hills definitely adds to the craziness. Streets are never straight nor wide: they go up down, and all around. Thrown in multi-level pedestrian walks, sky bridges, stairs going up and down, streets that become elevated highways, sidewalks that go from ground level to being thirty stories up in a few seconds and..whew, you have quite a scene in front of you. Of course, Justin and I got hopelessly lost in these narrow streets, as the canyon of highrises blocks out any hopes of seeing a recognizable landmark.
And within here bubbles a true urban energy; if you don’t like crowds, please stay the hell away from this city. But if you are interested in fascinating neighbourhoods, markets and street life, this could well be a good place for you to explore for a few days.
And if you are interested in local scenes, check out the hotpot restaurants. They are everywhere, and are as much social events as dining locales; lively, raucous alcohol-fueled atmosphere. Of course, we had to watch this through blurry eyes as our “not very spicy” hotpot turned out to be rather spicy. But delicious nonetheless, and perfect when washed down with The Chong’s own pineapple beer. Strangely enough, Chongqing’s streets also seemed to have the nicest, brightest oranges on offer (perhaps only so noticeable because everything else was black, brown and gray).
In the end, Chongqing comes across as a city not afraid to show its ugly side: it’s an overcrowded city in a developing country. But this, in a strange way, also makes it feel so much more alive than many other cities I have been to in China. It is also perhaps one of the few places that actually desperately needs the rampant re-development it is going through; but unlike other cities, I doubt this will do much to affect its lively character. Chongqing you are so dirty, but I still love you.
‘Funny China’ memories:
1)The scenic walk along the dry riverbed of the Chang Jiang was, well, not very scenic. It offered an impressive view of the city, but an unmistakable smell of sewage permeated the air (didn’t affect the Chinese families flying kites and skipping stones though, I guess Westerners are just wimps). This smell turned into an absolute stench when we had to jump over gushing sewage runoff to get back up to the street. Not a pleasant experience.
2) Walking along a road looking for restaurants, Justin and I realized that we had suddenly been dropped about twenty storeys below the area where we wanted to be. We thus wandered into an apartment complex to find some stairs to bring us back up. Trouble is the stairs only brought us halfway, and we had to clamber up weird utility paths, pipes, rocks and a wall to get the rest of the way (after accidentally walking into some migrant worker quarters perched halfway up this hill). Lost in a netherworld of concrete, air ducts and a pretty decent drop; impossible scene to describe, but we did emerge at the proper ’street level’ through some little garden. Of course, the locals wondered where in the hell these two foreigners had just appeared from.