Beibei, Chongqing, and Cruisin' the Mighty Yangze

I just completed the first leg of my epic journey and it was awesome.  I started my journey off by taking the bullet train to Wuhan, the sprawling capital of Hubei Province. It was my first speed train and it is 10 times better than regular trains or busses. First off, it looks super cool so that's just chyeah to begin with, second the seats are almost like lazy boy lounge chairs and they swivel so you can turn around and play cards with your train-mates and what-not what-have-you. Third, it travels at 200km per hour and is super smooth, hardly bumpy and jerky like regular chinese trains.  And lastly, what took us over 5.5 hours to drive took just 1 hour and 45 minutes.
After disembarking the train I found myself at the cold, semi-snowing Hankou train station which looked like something out of Russia's Red Square. I saw a brand new Citroen cab and hopped in and was off to the hotel I booked online. At first glance, the hotel was pretty dingy, cigarette burns in the sheets, small beds, hooker ads, etc....but hey it had some nice cheap art and a 19-inch tv so what else can you ask for right? From there I called one of the old foreign teachers from last year who is teaching in Wuhan now, and  met up with his friend Eddy, a DJ from South Africa. We went out to The Return bar where I met the same owner of The Return bar in my city. I saw a little bit of the town and the next morning was off bright and early for my flight to Chongqing.

Chongqing is the biggest metropolis of buildings and people I have ever seen. If you look at the city from one angle it will seem like New York or what I imagine Hong Kong to be, but if you look to your left or right the buildings just keep going on each side of the riving for as far as the eye can see, which isn't very far because of the white-out due to pollution/fog/people burning stuff/who knows. It's like New York times 10, and not many people really know about it.  One section of the city leads to another, and to another, and it just keeps going. Each time I visited the city I was amazed as if it were the first time my eyes had laid eyes upon the sprawling acres of high-rise apartments all around me.
The city streets are full of neon lights, night-life, people roaming about, a 1,000 year old temple named Lohan Si in pin yin, and a crazy markets. I walked by skin cow-heads with eyeballs still looming, skinned dogs hanging from meat hooks, all kinds of animal parts.....it's pretty different. And the city is known for it's spicy hotpot and beautiful girls apparently. I took a cable car ride on a wire over a part of the city and out across the Yangze river to the other side, I visited the temple mentioned earlier, with a room full of hundreds of strang-facially expressed lifelike figures, all different from each other. I toured a part of the town called Hanyandong, which includes a pirate village and 9 stories of lit-up chinese wooden classic-looking architectural buildings with stores selling all kinds of junk and food and tea, etc, located next to the river. And on top there is a pirate village, with a pirate boat, plenty of fake drunken pirates, and a pirate restaurant with 'welcoming' fake lady pirates. It's sounds weird, it definitely was unusual and unexpected to see in this Chinese city. Across the bay past the giant digital advertising displaying barges, you can see the ultra-modern looking symphony hall that looks like a giant spacecraft from the future idling by the river. The food was different from my province and refreshing. Besides Subway and Dairy Queen, we had this huge round bowl/plate that looks like a giant pizza dish with a delicious sauce and lots of potatoes and chicken that everyone dabbles in with their chopsticks. We were with two chinese students of the muslim religion from near Urumqi in the Northwest province of China, near Kazakhstan. So no pork was to be had so we ate at special muslim places with them.  But they weren't stereotypical, you couldn't tell they were muslim except for the whole pork thing, and we watched Borat with them which was hilarious, especially since they speak Kazhaki since they can see it from their house as Sarah Palin would put it.

I hung out for four days in Beibei with them and Keegan, a smaller town about 40 minutes outside of Chongqing. It had some cool offerings, such as the gigantic 35,000 student Southwestern University, a trek up the mountain to see the pagoda and surrounding temples, some weird bars with hooka, shoe shining for like 40 cents, and great food.

After meeting a nice girl in Chongqing at the Cotton Club, I headed for my cruise departure, semi-nervous, semi-hungover, and semi trying to imagine what was to come. I did not want to be stuck on a boat with no english-speakers and plenty of cigarette smoke, chicken feet, and cheap byjo to go 'round. Luckily, there was a guy from Holland and a guy from Israel on the boat as well to share the journey with.

First off, the boat they showed me the pictures of and was told I was going to be on, was not the boat I was on. Secondly, the English-speaking guide they told me would be on the boat, was not on the boat.

The heater did not work, the bathroom light went out halfway through the trip. Our Chinese roommates fell once over my shoe into the TV, and the other fell into the bathroom door and broke the bottom hinge out. I don't think he was drunk but I can't be certain. They were all nice, friendly people though and invited us over to share food, byjo, and small chat. Many wanted pictures with us and I got by with the minimal chinese language skills I have aquired since living here.

Ahh China, your like a box of rice-cakes, you never know what your gonna get. But hey, like Keegan said, don't do it for the boat. Do it for the scenery. Which was amazing to say the least. Humongous slabs of rock extending straight up over your head on each side greet you as you enter the first of the Three Gorges. Then following are coffin caves, more gorges, many small towns and old temples along the river. We stopped the first night at a temple that was 1,700 years old, rebuilt once due to fire, and moved when the Three Gorges Dam was completed in order to not meet a watery grave due to the damn rising the river.  Unfortunately, we were kind of hurried/shuttled through at many of the sites like cattle, but many things were still cool to see. The next day we took a separate bullet looking boat down a tributary to view the 'Mini-Three Gorges' which are equally as impressive. Then we came to a dock where we got off our boat and boarded another boat, a narrower, wooden, classic-asian looking type boat with the motor in the back and a hilarious tour guide, even though he spoke no English. After some funny pictures and videos while cruising down this hidden part of the river, we disembarked and headed back to our Cruise Barge.

This morning we awoke to some awesome cliff edges out of our room window in a village known for it's dragon-boat racing. Also the classic-asian looking boats out of every guide book and gallery. Lastly, we came to the main attraction, the Three Gorges Dam, China's biggest engineering project since the great wall, the biggest dam in the world, and many other crazy facts follow suit. It was very long, something like 28,000 meters, but however, not as impressive as me or my fellow traveler from Holland had expected. The Hoover Dam which I visited this past summer in Nevada is actually much more impressive architecturally do it's high, bowl-shaped slopes that seem to rise like a skyscaper.

And with that, I was back on the bus towards Xiangfan with a week full of adventure under my belt and ready for the next part of my journey.

Stay Tuned....