Chongqing

I arrived in Chongqing at 6:45am and despite the rain opted to walk to the city centre through the faceless plethora of identikit skyscrapers to the tree lined avenue along the murky banks of the Yangtze, strolling past the early morning tai-chi practitioners all getting their daily fix of escapism from the relentless churn of the megacity, albeit a psychological escape.

Unlike the other large cities I’ve been to, my first impressions of Chongqing were exactly how I expected it to be. It’s a true megalopolis, it’s gritty, it is grey and it smells. People who travel are usually in constant pursuit of beauty, but what’s beautiful isn’t necessarily very interesting.  It may not be pretty but I find Chongqing a fascinating place. It’s the fastest growing city in the world. This time next year it will have 800,000 more inhabitants than it does now, the majority of which will be unskilled peasants who can’t resist the lure of the big city, a story that’s being told throughout China and the developing world in general. If I had grown up all my life in rural China hearing stories about the great quality of life in the city, I’d maybe feel a sense of betrayal once I arrived. The majority of the rural population in China have much larger homes than city dwellers; they have better air quality, fresher food, serenity, a sense of community, respite from the constant hooting of car horns and more time on their hands. The average wealth may be far higher in Chongqing than the surrounding countryside but I’m sceptical that this equates to a better quality of life.

The initial population boom in Chongqing occurred with the construction of the 3 Gorges Dam downstream from Chongqing. The dam is one of the largest in the world. The flooded area caused by the dam is said to be the length of England. I’m dubious of any statement made in China that involves figures. The flooded area doesn’t look big on Google Earth and the woman who insists that Chongqing has a population of 50 million just doesn’t have a clue. Regardless of how big the flooded area is, whole towns and villages were taken off the map and many of the 1.3 million displaced people were rehoused in Chongqing. The central government have since invested huge amounts of money in the infrastructure of Chongqing and it’s continued to grow at a phenomenal rate.

I imagine Chongqing now to be very similar to New York 100 years ago with huge amounts of people migrating in search of a better life resulting in the skyline mushrooming vertically, and a sense of eternal optimism for the future which blinds them of the present grime and squalor. Like Manhattan, Chongqing is limited in its outward expansion. Whereas Manhattan is limited by water, Chongqing has two rows of parallel mountains running along the whole length of the city. Only Dubai can rival Chongqing for the sheer volume of skyscraper construction. But whereas the construction in Chongqing is fuelled by a demand in the here and now, the demand for tall buildings in Dubai is fuelled merely by the speculation of international investors who have no sense of connection to the city and wealthy Arab Sheiks who are essentially just a bunch of Peter Pans, playing a sort of game of Lego for grown up, spoilt, rich boys. I know what I prefer, Chongqing is messy, but it’s real.

Chongqing is known as one of the 3 furnaces of China alongside Wuhan and Hangzhou. I was in Hangzhou in mid-September and that truly was a furnace. In early November Chongqing feels like Scotland in May or June. It’s very hilly and has lots of alleyways with steep steps. Not one street runs in a straight line. It makes it very difficult to get from A to B without a map. Streets often do horseshoe turns then go under or over the street you just walked along. Navigating using common logic takes you round in circles.

It is said that the Chongqing hotpot is the spiciest dish in the world. It is basically a big bowl of chilli broth that gets roasted at your table and you put in whatever ingredients you want. It is a dish that is to be shared. I met a group of Swedish guys and asked them if they wanted to share a hot pot. We went to KFC instead and they even made sure they didn’t get anything spicy from there. They did have an all-day train journey the following day starting at 6am, I can understand why they would not want hotpot. They said I’m turning into a Chinese person. I guess it’s a fair conclusion to come to when I light up a cigarette in a fast food restaurant, stub it out on the floor, spit on the street and have a complete disregard for traffic laws but it’s just a phase, I’ll snap out of it as soon as I leave. I would have liked to have tried a hot pot but I won’t feel my journey through China is incomplete until I’ve had what locals claim to be the spiciest dish in the world. I’m sure there are many regions of the world that claim this accolade. I was flicking through a Chongqing photo book that had some captions and the occasional paragraph or two. I was reading that one of Chongqing’s streets recently received the National Award for “Model Demonstration Street in the National Campaign against Fake Commodities”. Whether or not Chongqing has the spiciest dish is irrelevant, there is an accolade Chongqingers can be rightly proud of. Go Chongqing. You show them how it’s done.

Additional Information

·         Apart from the KFC I can’t remember when I last ate meat. Were it not for Powder Milk in my coffee I’d have been living a vegan lifestyle for the past month or so.

·         I eat a kilo of tangerines a day. I buy two Jin a day. I think that’s one kilo.

·         Most estimates put the population of Chongqing as between 5 and 35 million. I’d say it’s closer to 5.

·         I haven’t lost a pair of glasses since I was in Shanghai.

·         I haven’t cut my hair in 14 months. It normally looks quite short due to my curls but when I get out of the shower I look like Ace Ventura, quality.

·         I look like a cross between Jimi Hendrix and Where’s Wally the rest of the time.

·         I can almost sit in full lotus position.

·         Life is good.

·         I got the population of Yangshuo wrong. The county as a whole has 300,000. I don’t know the population of the town.

I know I said the Terracotta Warriors were not worth seeing but I really wanted to visit Jiuzhaigou and I didn’t want to go to there and backtrack the same way I came to Chengdu so I opted to go to Xi’an instead. The only roads from Jiuzhaigou through Western Sichuan and into Yunnan that don’t go via Chengdu cut through Tibet and foreigners aren’t allowed to travel independently in Tibet. I’m not paying for a Tibetan permit anyway. The money from the permit goes towards the heavy handed policing of Tibet. Besides, the masses of tourists all seem to have left China months ago so I predicted crowds to being not that bad in Xi’an. I’m a bit nervous about Jiuzhaigou and Western Sichuan. It’s going to be mid-November by the time I get there and the average height in the area is 4000m. I only have one jumper, no warm jacket and my sleeping bag has a comfort level of +15degrees.  I want to get through it and have time to see Yunnan province but because I am going from 200m above sea level to an average height of 4000m I can’t afford to rush up to the Tibetan Plateau too quick or else a heavy dose of altitude sickness is on the cards.