September 18 (Friday) – Chongqing

First stop today was the Huguang Huiguan Guild Hall, built in the 1600’s by people from Canton who were moved to Chongqing after war and floods devastated the population. The guild hall was a meeting place for the people from Canton. There were originally several hundred of the halls in the city, for people from various parts of China but most were destroyed during World War II. The hall had been occupied continuously until just a few years ago when the government turned it into a museum.

The modern stone and glass Three River Gorge museum provided information about the rivers and the effects of the flooding from the dam. There was a very long mural showing the rise of the water at each city and the number of people relocated from each city (1.2 million in total, officially). Some cities were completely rebuilt higher on the hills above the river.

After lunch we took a cable car ride across the Jailing River and back…just to take in the views. Some of the neighborhoods we went over were very old and laid out in a very jumbled fashion. They are scheduled for destruction, to be replaced by high rise apartments. There are over 6000 high rise apartment buildings in Chongqing that are over 35 stories high. Chongqing is also called the City of Bridges with 31 bridges over the two rivers and several thousand smaller ones over various streams. Chongqing is one of four provincial municipalities in China (as opposed to just being a city). These municipalities cover a large geographical area that extends well beyond the actual city (the other three are Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin). The Chongqing municipality has a population of 31.5 million people. A “small” city in China seems to be only a couple of million.


















The access to the boat dock (for our Yangtze River Cruise) is 200 steps down to the river level so we took the funicular instead. We really lucked out on the boat…we were upgraded to one of the two largest suites...Deck 3, right in front. The boat is the Century Star. We have small balconies off the side of the bedroom and the sitting room with the floor to ceiling windows looking forward, plus we share a huge front deck with the other suite across the hall from us. We must be somebody now.

Chongqing Album