China - Part 4

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Welcome to my fourth posting related to ten days in China. This one has quite a few images, but if I think there may be about two more posts to this virtual vacation slide show and I really only want to do about two more.




These first two photos are from the city of Chongqing, which faced a lot of the troubles in WWII. Now, it's a pretty big manufacturing center. There's not a lot of bicycles because the landscape is so hilly. Instead there are a lot of motorcycles, and even motorcycle taxis! What was striking about the city is that you would see a lot of development coupled with a lot of poverty. You can see a little of this in these two photos, taken from about the same area of the city. The first shows more commercial development, and the second has a bit more of a run down buildling.

We went to a Szechuan hot pot restaurant that was pretty cool. You wouldn't see anything like it in the states. The pot in the center had a spicy broth, and then a little conveyor belt (only this was small wooden boats in water) would bring around a bunch of ingredients you could cook in the hot pot. Lots of different, unidentifiable meats, including some organ meat (we also saw brain float by). Might not have been that sanitary. Fortunately, none of us got sick.

The reason we were in Chongqing was that we went on a Yangtze River boat cruise. The scenic highlight are the Three Gorges along the river. There's a hydroelectric dam that will be completed in 2009, and this may affect the way the gorges and other upstream sights appear since upstream water level will rise about 175 meters.



The photo above is of the first of the three gorges. On the ten yuan bill, there is a photo of this area. Here's one scan I found on the 'net of the bill.





The two photos above come from the second gorge, which has a number of sights such as the rhinocerous gorge (first photo) and the goddess gorge (second photo). The "goddess" of the goddess gorge is the little nub to the right of the two large protrusions. Pretty tiny, and we were fortunate it wasn't too foggy.








As the weather got better that day, we made a stop off, got on a ferry and travelled down the Shennong stream. The first three photos are photos of the stream. The ferry took us to these 15 person boats with four-man crews. When the water got really shallow, instead of rowing, the guys got out and pulled the boat (see the fourth photo). Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the boats these guys were pulling. I was also sad that I didn't capture them taking cigarette breaks while there was a little bit of a break.