Our bus dropped us at some street in the middle of Chongqing. However, it seems that they knew we were coming. They? Just as we got off the bus a large group of touts came rushing at us. Noticing that we were tourists, they kept shoving us a whole bunch of flyers, apparently for touring the Yangtze River, which is quite famous here. Since I look Chinese, they didn’t really pay much attention to me but rather kept pursuing my friend and shoving flyers into his bag. These ladies apparently work for travel agencies here in Chongqing, competition must be intense since they kept following us long after we left the street. We ended up with a whole bagful of flyers. It was a unique way to be welcomed into Chongqing.
We wandered along the streets of Chongqing trying to figure out how to get to our hostel of choice. Chongqing is a huge city and the odds of us finding it randomly are not good. Along the way, we already saw a lot of restaurants specializing in Sichuan food. Even though I was starving we had to get to our hostel first. Finally we tried hailing a cab, I couldn’t believe how difficult it was for us to get a cab. One thing I learned here in China, to get a cab, you’ll have to be agressive, or else you will definitely walk home.
Finally, luck smiled on us. We were able to get a cab and the driver seems to know where the place is. We stuffed our backpacks into the cab and we were off. I was able to get a good view of the streets of Chongqing. For starters, Chongqing is a mountain city 山城. It was amazing to see skyscrapers jutting out of the mountains. It really forms a cityscape much like Hong Kong. The center of Chongqing city is in a peninsula bounded by the Yangtze River and the Jialing River. There are a lot of huge bridges which connect the peninsula with the opposite bank. I imagine it must be really difficult to built infrastructure here. One thing quite disappointing here especially for lovers of scenery, the fog here in Chongqing is really thick and it almost always difficult to see the buildings clearly from a distance.
Chongqing has the third largest central business district in China. It shows in the huge number of skyscrapers built here. The status of Chongqing quite confusing. It is offically considered a municipality but has the ranking of a pronvince. There are three other municipalities which share this distinction: Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin. However, as a municipality, Chongqing is the biggest of them, almost like a small province.
Apparently it is not easy to navigate the streets of Chongqing, our driver seemed to be going around in circles in this huge city. He then told me he needs to stop and top up on fuel. Despite all the flak that China gets with its environment, the country is very active in promoting the use of clean fuel. In the case of this taxi – compressed natural gas or CNG. The taxis have a huge cylinder in the boot to store the CNG. It was interesting to find out. Not only is this fuel cleaner than ordinary petrol, it is also much cheaper. And considering this environment of high oil prices, using CNG might not be such as bad idea.
As the driver was about to park into the refilling station. He asked us to get out of the car and rest for a while while he refills. I was a little wary of leaving the bags in the car with the driver still in it. He might suddenly drive off with our bags and there would be nothing we can do about it.
Well, the driver didn’t drive off with our stuff. While waiting at the refilling station we discovered that it was right on top of a ledge overlooking the city, it was an impressive sight. The river below is something of a letdown since there wasn’t really too much water flowing, considering it is supposed to be one of the world’s longer rivers. However, as can be seen in the length of the bridges, it can hold much, much more water. Could it be because of the Three Gorges Dam being built downstream?
Soon after our driver called us and we were on our way again, all this time it seems the meter was running but it didn’t really cost much. After a few more turns along the highways we finally reached our hostel. More on the in my next post.
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