Chongqing to Lijiang (via Chengdu)
It's amazing how you can have little conversations with people without sharing a common language. We've had 3 meals at the same spot and are pretty friendly with the owners now.
"Are you flying out today?" - "Yep, going to Lijiang in Yunnan" - "Ah, Yunnan is nice. What did you think of Chongqing?" - "Chongqing is great. Crazy. Bright. Steep! Got sore legs from all the stairs" - "Haha yep! Have a good trip bye".
Part of us is happy to move on. Especially the guts. Not sure we can stomach much more Sichzuan chilli.
We have a tricky travel day today, thanks to some changing plans and some poor planning for this section of the trip. We bailed on squeezing in a proper stop in Chengdu so will have to settle for a passing day.
We get the high speed rail from Chongqing North station, the same we came in on. An easy hour-ish.
We get the Chengdu metro to People's Park in the city. A decent sized park, very green, very nicely done...lots of people. It has some history: it was a flashpoint at the start of the 1911 revolution which ended the long run of emperors of China. Protests against nationalising the railways which was about to cost a lot of people a lot of money. It was violently suppressed and sure enough, here comes the revolution.
We hear this park is great for drinking tea and people watching. So thats what we do. Unfortunately the place we pick is pretty hectic, the bamboo chairs are super uncomfortable and the tea was expensive and not that great.
We decide to wander the park and find somewhere nicer. We find a quieter side of the park with bonsai displays and other nicely manicured areas. Similar to other cities it's so nice they have these large spaces with lots of greenery to escape the city and smoke and noise. Green space is at a premium in China. Haven't seen many sports ovals, that's for sure.
We pull up a bamboo seat at a different place and order some local food. Even from a place like this we reckon it is good stuff. A special type of local dumpling (zhong dumplings), a roast duck and Dan Dan noodles. We're in no hurry so we sit around and soak in the atmosphere. Jeff makes a call to his Dad and tries to block out the persistent ringing of the ear pickers clicking their tongs together.
We walk past "matchmaking corner" - kinda like Tinder but with your written profile printed out and hung on a line. Blue for boys, pink for girls. All ages. All walks of life. All looking for a partner. It's kinda wholesome. But also a bit weird. We get the feeling like it's lot of older parents there looking for a match to get their grown up kids out of the house.
There is a band playing and what seems like live karaoke. A singer is ready. They let the band know what song they want. They get presented with some flowers by various people. They take the mic and sing what seem to be well known songs, trying to get the (older) crowd to sing along, or maybe even have a little dance. Again, so wholesome. It was quite nice to see the retirees so active in the community.
We head towards an area called Kuanzhai Alley that we can already picture by its description and what we've seen in other cities: "it's a preserved Qing-era neighbourhood dating to the early 1700s".
Which means lovely buildings and aesthetics ruined by cheap souvenirs and other touristy shops plus whatever the local "thing" is, for example ear cleaning or fan waving performances. Plus a crap load of people, of course.
OK, that was a little cynical and maybe not compeletly fair since we're doing this city on a time crunch and therefore not leaving the tourist strip. But it's funny and disappointing to see the same style of "tourism" in every city so far.
We hole up at a tea/coffee spot, sporting some cozy decor and walls lined with books. We blog, we drink tea and coffee and kill some time people watching.
Now it's time for the trip to the airport. Easy enough on the metro even with a couple of line changes.
Checking into the airport is not bad. We lose the key component of a souvenir lighter we bought in Beijing, but the portable battery pack passed muster, which is apparently not easy to do.
OK, which gate are we? 209... There are over 250 gates at this airport. And there are two airports in this city! We walk all the way to our gate to realise our stomachs don't really want the food that's available here. Aka we've had too much rich, oily, spicy Chinese food in the last few weeks.
We walk all the way back to KFC, feeling only a little ashamed of ourselves. The KFC Portugese tarts help us forget our shame and we march back to gate 209.
Courts is way down the back in a middle seat, Jeff is at the front in a middle seat. But it's all good; Chengdu to Lijiang is only 1 hour and 10 minutes. We both read and make sure we don't sleep since it's 10pm.
We have a driver, Andy, waiting for us at the quiet airport in Lijiang. It's about 45 mins to where we are staying in Shuhue. We get a good amount of info from Andy who's English is great thanks to his time working at a classy hotel.
He drops us as close as he can to our place, which is at the front of the North Gate of Shuhue ancient town. He has coordinated with the hotel were staying at for them to come and get us since it's dark, the streets are confusing and Google maps is pretty bad in here.
The girl arrives on a scooter with a little trailer. We jump in, thankful we only have about 8kg of luggage each (humble brag). We barely fit in and it's a bumpy old ride. We get a positive vibe from the town though. Quite a step down from Chongqing, that's for sure. We haven't seen a building above 2 storeys yet.
We head into our place and it's dead cute. Quick shower and bed at about 1am. Not the worst result since we travelled west today and all of China is on the same timezone. So we don't expect there to be much happening until around 8am tomrorow anyway.
