Friday, 7 July 2006

The city with many names - Chongqing

The starting point of our Yangtze River cruise

Four days in July 2006



It is hard to choose one word to describe Chongqing. Surrounded by waters on three sides, and by the mountains on four sides, Chongqing is known as 'mountain city', 'foggy city' and 'furnace city'. People call Chongqing “Mountainous City” because of its hillside building, “Fog City” for its brumous weather, and “Furnace” for its high temperature in summer. 

The "Mountain City" of Chongqing clings to steep cliffs at the confluence of the Yangtze and a major tributary, the Jialing River. This bustling city rises high above docks held in the rushing currents by cables lashed to anchor holes cut into the rocky shore. Cable cars glide across to opposite banks and giant bridges carry creeping waves of trucks loaded with the city's varied industrial output. Caves perforate the steep hills, once built as bomb shelters and now busy as garages or naturally cool restaurants and hair salons. 

For centuries the main commercial and transportation centre for Sichuan Province, Chongqing is now under rapid transformation due to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. The city was granted national status in l996 as a municipal region similar to Bejing, Shanghai and Tianjin with an administrative region that includes the eastern Sichuan counties downriver for a total population of some 30 million people. Chongqing is now proud to be the world's largest metropolitan region.


The invisible city - newspaper article about the exponential growth of Chongqing

Posing at Chaotianmen port where we started our 3 day Yangtze cruise

Main Departure Ports on Yangtze River


From the west upstream area to the east estuary on the Yangtze River, there are three main departure ports for Yangtze cruises, namely Chongqing, Yichang, and Shanghai.

Prior to our cruise, we spent four days in Chongqing exploring. Gill, a Canadian colleague who worked with me in Shanghai, shared this hotel room

Views of Chongqing from our hotel room 


Day-time view towards the river

Day-time view of apartments and other housing

 Day-time view of apartments and other housing

Chongqing Housing

Day-time view towards a mall

Night-time view towards the river

Chongqing scenery


Chongqing accommodation

Chongqing accommodation

Street scenery

Street scenery - Old versus the new

Street scenery - Old versus the new

Commercial district

Shopping

Street scenery - colorful apartment block

Transportation

Less affluent section

Street scenery

Less affluent housing

Poor housing

The informal commercial sector is booming in Chongqing

Street cleaner cart at a bus stop

Every space is utilized - These street food vendors chose steps

Tunnel community

The Bang Bang Jun (Porters a.k.a. "stickmen")


What really caught my eye and my camera lens was the amount of porters transporting various goods on poles all throughout the city.

One of the porters selling his fruit and veg

Negotiations

Sidewalk restaurant & porter

Taking a break from hard labor and searing heat

Hard work - can see why they are called stickmen

Hard at work

Street scenes, vendors, food and restaurants


local delicacies
  
A street food vendor in his minutely small kitchen

Many options are available

Fruit and veg market place

Public pay phones .... to call home. I guess many can't afford cell phones.

 Fruit and veg stall

Small street shop about 2 meters by 1 meter, selling almost everything from batteries to phone cards

Sidewalk tailoring

This guy fixed my shoes

Step vendors

Locals


This disabled man is probably unemployed and dependent on charity

Girls begging for money

Motherly love

Jiefangbei Square (Times Square)


Jiefangbei Square

Jiefangbei Square

Chongqing at night


Jiefangbei Square

Jiefangbei Square

Porters taking a rest
  
Giant electronic notice/advertisement board -
on which they showed football matches of the 2006 Soccer World Cup

Jiefangbei Square


Chaotianmen port in Chongqing is where the Yangtze river ferries depart from, and we boarded our cruise ship here. It is very close to the downtown of Chongqing, and it is the only port to get aboard in the ‘mountain city’. There are a total of 13 docks.

A Hazy view of the port - air pollution in Chongqing is quite bad

A Hazy view of the port

Elevators from city to docking platforms

Dock advertisement board

Our cruise ship and home for the next 3 days

The docking gates

The ramp on the dock to our ship


We spent about 4 days in Chongqing while waiting for our Yangtze river cruise to commence. We boarded our cruise ship late afternoon for a three day cruise of the Yangtze River.

Join me on the Yangtze River Cruise here ...


No comments:

Post a Comment