David's Big Adventure in China

It’s interesting how different the personalities of different cities can be. Kunming, where I lived my first year in China was a “morning” city and Nanning is a “night” city. I think it has a lot to do with the weather. People in Kunming are often up and out early in the morning and Nanning people are more night people. New Years’s eve in Kunmng was a non-event and the streets were empty at midnight but here in Nanning there were tons of people out and about. I have posted pictures of a famous nighttime outdoor food street in Nanning called Zhongshan Lu. Some of the pictures might disturb those of you who are very sensitive to the treatment of animals. Chinese are famous for eating anything and everything. Look closely and you will see all kinds of culinary delights (or frights!). I was there one evening and took some video that I tried to post to facebook without success. While I was there I was pick pocketed. I had my cell phone and an empty glasses case in the pocket of my jacket which was zipped shut. I felt something and quickly checked and found the zipper mostly opened and the glasses case missing (it was on top of the phone). I looked around and determined the likely culprit, went and grabbed him on the shoulder and said to him in Chinese “you took my things!” His friend handed me back the glasses case and they quickly walked away with me cussing at them in English. Petty theft is a big problem here and I know many people who have had things stolen (phones, handbags, shopping bags, bicycles, e-bikes, etc). I just heard today that one of the lady teachers had her earrings jerked off her ears and stolen last night. I went back to Zhongshan Lu a couple weeks later and took the pictures I’ve posted (click on “pictures” link under “my links” on the right side of the blog).

I recently went to see the movie “Avatar” in 3d. A friend helped get a discount ticket for 50rmb which is about $7.50 USD. The normal price was 100rmb……so expensive for China but the theatre was full on a Monday afternoon at 4:45. The dialogue was in English with Chinese subtitles but when the natives were speaking their language the subtitles were also in Chinese. We had tried to go on Friday night but they were sold out except for the scalpers outside selling tickets for 130rmb (almost $20!). Most Chinese watch more western movies than Chinese movies and the government limits how many western movies the theaters can show and of course they censor which ones can be shown. They were also showing Avatar in 2d but I just read that they stopped showing it in the 2d theatres because it was drawing too much attention away from Chinese films and drawing too much attention to the issue of forced evictions which is a big issue here. (Developers and corrupt officials work together to obtain property for redevelopment without regard for current residents.)

And speaking of big brother, there was an article in the Chinese English language newspaper recently that the karaoke bars are now required to connect their systems to a government system via the Internet which monitors the songs being played. The official reason for the system is to protect intellectual property rights and ensure that banned songs (such as vulgar songs) are not played. Interesting that they are closely watching the songs but you can hire “entertainment” ladies in many of these bars.

I try not to buy too many material things so I don’t accumulate too much stuff here, but last week I bought a motorbike helmet and a sleeping bag. The helmet cost me 40rmb ($6). The quality and construction is nothing near what you’d get in the states but it’s much better than the helmets I use when I take a motorbike taxi. I sometimes take a motorbike taxi because they are faster than a bus or a regular taxi (by weaving through traffic) and cheaper than a regular taxi. They always give me a helmet to wear but usually it’s just a really cheap plastic helmet that would do very little good in an accident and is worn by all of their passengers. Having my own helmet gives me more protection and less hygiene worries. I bought the sleeping bag because the instructions I received for my upcoming trip indicates that I will need one for sleeping on a boat on the Nile and perhaps in a tent or cabin on the beach of the Red Sea. On January 30, I’m headed to Egypt for 2 weeks. I’ll join an Intrepid Tours group when I arrive in Cairo. So my next posting will probably be after I return to Nanning in mid February. Chun Jie kuaile! (Happy Spring Festival/Chinese New Year)

It turned cold here again a few days ago and I was reminded of the strange Chinese habit of leaving the windows open even if it’s only 45 degrees outside with no heat inside. They have to have “fresh air” no matter the temperature. They will wear a winter coat and tolerate the cold rather than close the windows……..drives me crazy sometimes! They also have this strange concept of “heat in the body”. If someone is not feeling well they often attribute the illness to not enough or too much “heat in the body”. Then they say that the doctor told them to eat or not eat certain foods because they contribute to the heat in the body problem.

Nanning has now become a modern city! We have a Marriott hotel here now. It opened within the last two weeks and I went there last week to meet a friend. When I was there I met the General Manager (from Singapore) and the Food and Beverage Manager (from Austria). Pretty much all the employees that guests would interact with speak English. Marriott brought in about 100 employees from other places to work there. I think both the guys I met had been working in Shanghai. The GM (his name is Peter Pan – no joking) asked me about any International schools in Nanning for his teenage sons. He enrolled them in a local Chinese school and they weren’t happy there because they were being bullied to pay protection money. They are ethnic Chinese and speak English and Chinese fluently and had attended International schools in the other cities they lived in China. There is one small International school here run by an American family. They opened the school in 2002 and started with only 5 students (3 of them being their own children). They now have about 50 students in total in grades 1 to 12 from 9 different countries. They are only allowed to have foreign students in their school. I know the guy that runs this school and gave the GM at the hotel his contact information. The foreigner community here is pretty small and I think there are fewer than 2000 of us in this city of more than 3 million.

I spent most of Christmas day preparing final exams and then in the evening went to a bar/restaurant owned by a Chinese lady I know. She wanted me to be there to play Santa for a Christmas party. They gave me something to wear that looked more like a Mrs. Claus outfit than a Santa suit. I said a few ho ho ho’s and ate, drank and was merry. They had a little Christmas show with some Christmas songs, etc. It’s interesting how much English they used for a mostly Chinese audience. Half of the bar was being used by a Chinese church group to have a service which tended to reduce the merry making of the rest of the group. I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year too!

I was at a western food store recently which is run by an American and overhead a conversation about matchmaking services. The American guy was coaching a Chinese lady about how to operate a matchmaking service and how much to charge. There are many people here who make money helping the Chinese ladies meet foreign men and some of them charge a lot for their services. Some of them are legitimate and do their best to help the ladies find a foreign husband but some provide little more than short lived hope. I have heard of some of these ladies paying more than $1000 USD. Why are these ladies so desperate to find a foreign husband you ask? Some of them think the foreigners are rich and are going for the money, some want a passport to live in a country they think is better and where their child can get a good education, and some don’t want to have anything to do with the Chinese men. The local men have a bad reputation for treating the ladies poorly and being playboys, especially if they have money. It is not uncommon for a man with money to pay the living expenses of a young girlfriend even if he is married. I have mostly been able to avoid people involved in these activities but did have a foreign guy try to introduce me to a lady last year who I suspect was paying him for this kind of service.

Students…….I became a bit frustrated this week with some of my students. I gave a quiz last week and in one of the classes the average score was 73 (this was typical of all three classes). One third of the students had a score of 94 or higher so obviously the quiz was not too difficult. That means that the average for the other 2/3’s was about 62 which tells me that they are not doing any work outside of class. Is this true of kids in college in the U.S.? Is it unreasonable of me to think they should actually do the assigned homework? Most of my students come from families with money and most of them are the only child which has led to many of them being spoiled. Combine that with the culture here of not allowing any child to fail a class and you’ve got a sure recipe for laziness. There was a kid who showed up in one of my classes in week 7 asking to be added to the class he said because of scheduling issues. I talked to someone in the office about him and found out that he was instructed during week 3 to go join my class but apparently he decided to play for a few weeks first. He did the same thing for his other classes. We decided not to allow him to join any classes and I assume he has now gone home and had to explain to his parents why he’s not in school. I was happy that the school allowed him to fail as it sends a message to the other students. One of my best students from last year is taking my accounting class this year. She told me recently that she just found out that her mother is an accountant. I’ve been amazed here by how little the kids know about their parents’ jobs.

I had a nice Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, complete with turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie. It cost me $16 which is about the most I’ve paid for a dinner here in China. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday!

I’m hard at work back in Nanning after my holiday trip. The weather has cooled off here in the past few days thanks to typhoon Parma which followed me back to China from the Philippines. I flew to Manila on October 1 and on the way in I could see some of the flooding that has impacted Manila. I then flew on to a city called Bacolod which is about half way from Manila to the far south of the Phils. This city was rated by a magazine as the best city to live in the Phils. I spent almost 5 days there and wasn’t sure why it was named the best city for living. They were having a big festival there so that made it a bit more interesting but otherwise it wasn’t a very interesting place. I then flew back to Manila and took a bus to Tagaytay which is about 35 miles south of Manila. It is a small city located on a ridge with a nice view of a lake and a volcanic island in the lake. The volcano blew its top not so long ago so it makes for a nice view except that I barely got to see it because of the bad weather. The weather there is generally cooler than Manila with a nice breeze and it was cool and rainy during my time there thanks to the return of typhoon Parma’s outer bands. Tagaytay was a pretty comfortable place to stay because of the weather and plenty of restaurants. It is a resort area frequented by people from Manila wanting to escape Manila for a few days. There are also many foreigners living there and I ran into a gathering of about 20 foreigners in the bar/café next to my hotel. I joined them for a beer and learned about their experiences living there.

Since I have lived in China I have come to appreciate how lucky I am to have been born in an English speaking country and the USA in particular. English has become the global language and through my teaching I have come to appreciate how big the U.S. economy is relative to the rest of the world. I think most of us who grew up in the states take these things for granted and have a U.S. focused view of the world because so much of the world’s media and entertainment are based in the states. Friday I went to the provincial Personnel Department building to interview doctors to test their English level (the Personnel Department contacted my school and asked for 3 foreign teachers to help conduct the interviews.) The doctors have applied for an exchange program to go study for a short period of time in Germany. When they are in Germany, they will use English to communicate with the doctors there. Nobody expects them to speak German. When I was working for Dreyer’s, I learned after we were acquired by Nestle that English is the common language for Nestle for their operations all over the world (they are based in Switzerland). I have since learned that other multinationals also use English as the common language. I have also learned in my travels that English signs are common in most countries and English is almost always the second language used.

China has been in the news recently for its economy having recovered quickly from the recession. They are expecting 8% growth in the economy this year but there is some skepticism about that number because there is other information that suggests otherwise. Power usage has been reported as being down vs. the previous year. Apparently government spending is what is driving the economic growth these days although car sales are a bright spot. Car sales are up 25 to 30% vs. last year and now china is #1 in the world for new car sales. The government provided some incentives to purchase new cars with engines smaller than 1.6 liters and many people took advantage of the opportunity. Most cars of this size are made in China so the incentives were targeted at cars made here.

After looking at my pictures, some of you may wonder if I only have one or two shirts since you see my orange shirt in many of the pictures. Actually, I have 2 of those oranges shirts and they are special travel shirts made to protect me from the sun and they dry very quickly after being washed. So when traveling I can hand wash one of those shirts in the evening and it will probably be dry the next morning if I want to wear it again; perfect for traveling light.

Classes started a week ago and I have an interesting schedule. I teach Tuesday morning and afternoon, Wednesday morning and afternoon, Thursday morning, and Sunday morning and afternoon. So my weekend begins at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday and ends on Sunday morning. I am teaching 3 sections of International Business, 3 sections of Finance and Accounting, and a class called English Interest Corner. The reason I have classes on Sunday is that is the only time that juniors and seniors are free to take that class. The juniors and seniors are former full time students of SCIC (Sino-Canadian International College, which is the school I work for) but are now studying something other than English at another college within the university. They want to have English as a second major so they come back to SCIC for that. SCIC is only full time for freshmen and sophomores. I guess you could think of it as a junior college with all of the students having English as their major. There are a total of about 1100 full time students and 29 foreign teachers at SCIC which is a money making enterprise. Except for my Sunday classes, all of my students are sophomores. There are two other colleges at this university that employ foreign teachers so in total there are over 50 foreign teachers here with all but a handful of them teaching English. The other languages taught as a major are Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese.

We will have a holiday from October 1 to 9 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of modern day China and also Mid Autumn festival. It’s amazing to me to think that China has only been a country in its modern form for 60 years considering its long history and culture. The government is really making a big deal of the celebration. Anyplace worth traveling to in China will be packed with people during the holiday so I’ve decided to get out of the country. I’ll be going to the Philippines. Until next time….

On August 7, I took the overnight train to Kunming, then went to the airport and met a friend. We took a flight to Shangri-la in western Yunnan Province (not far from Tibet and Myanmar). We stayed there for 3 nights and visited the old town, Pu Dacuo National Park and the local grasslands. This area was primarily inhabited by Tibetans and Naxi minority people before it became a popular tourist area. The weather was nice and cool in the 50’s and 60’s as the elevation there is about 11,000 feet. It was nice and picturesque but I don’t think it deserves the name Shangri-la. (It was renamed Shangri-la to promote tourism.) We left early on the 11th and headed to Tiger Leaping Gorge where we used Tina’s Guest House as a base for a nice hike down to the river. The gorge was definitely worth the visit and would be worth spending a couple days there if you like nature and hiking. The gorge is more than 3000 feet from peak to the river. We hired a local guide to lead us on our hike for the afternoon for about $6. After our hike, we continued on by bus to Lijiang and spent one night there in the old city. From there, my friend flew back to Kunming and I took a bus for 8 hours back to Kunming. After spending a day in Kunming visiting friends there I took the overnight train back home to Nanning arriving on the 14th.

After relaxing and catching up on things at home for a couple weeks I went with a friend to Longsheng in the northern part of this province to see the Longji rice terraces. We spent one night in the small town of Longsheng (about 170,000) before going to the tourist village of Longji nestled in the mountains and surrounded by the rice terraces (also called Dragon Backbone Rice Terraces…see pic’s). The rice terraces were created 600 to 700 years ago and are quite beautiful. We spent two days there hiking through the mountains and enjoying the cooler weather. Then we went to Yangshuo for 2 days where we toured a cave that is only accessible via boat (not too exciting if you’ve seen other caves) and visiting a local park famous for a huge 1500 year old Banyon tree. One evening we went to see the Zhang Yimou production called Impression (Sanjie Liu) which was great. Zhang Yimou is the man who created and produced the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. This production uses over 600 people dressed in local traditional costumes and takes place mostly on the river using flat rafts and portable bridges. It uses the karsts (small limestone mountains) in the area as a backdrop and lights them to highlight the beautiful scenery. This was my third visit to Yangshuo which is one of the most famous tourist spots in China and where you will see more foreigners as a percentage of the total than anywhere else in China.

I’m now back in Nanning and start back to work on Monday the 7th with a week of meetings and lesson prep before starting classes the following week. It’s been so hot here the last few weeks with the temperature often reaching the mid 90’s with high humidity. Recently I took a cold shower trying to cool off after being outside but the water wasn’t cool enough to cool me down……lol. Even the rats try to stay indoors as I saw a family of them in the nicest restaurant on campus recently. Actually, they live there full time and I often see them there……such is life in China……we all have to get along to have a “harmonious society” as the leaders here like to say!

On Monday, July 13, I left Nanning on an overnight train to Guangzhou. I needed to go to Guangzhou before I went to Japan to buy my Japan Rail-pass. I bought a 3 week pass for about $600 which allows me to ride on any Japan Rail company trains, buses or ferries without any additional cost but the pass must be purchased outside Japan and I couldn’t buy it in Nanning. I spent 1 night in Guangzhou then went to Hong Kong and spent one night there before taking off for Japan. I found a cheap hostel in HK for $20 for a room that was about 5 feet by 10 feet including the bathroom but it was clean and sufficient for one night. While I was in HK I was reminded how HK is an “anything goes” town with so many people from all over the world.

On Thursday, the 16th I left HK for Tokyo and after 1 bus ride, two flights, 3 trains and a short walk later I arrived at my hostel. I had a 5 feet by 8 feet room without a private bathroom for $28 per night for the first two nights before I moved to the hotel that was part of my tour package with Intrepid Tours. On Friday, I began exploring Tokyo on my own and at lunchtime a Japanese friend I met while we were both living in Tampa joined me and spent the rest of the day showing me around. We visited some of the famous sites after having a nice sushi lunch. We had dinner at TGI Fridays (I know you will find this funny but remember, I don’t get a chance to eat at western restaurants where I live except McD’s, KFC or Pizza Hut). On Saturday I visited some other places in Tokyo on my own before joining the tour group folks Saturday evening. I had booked a two week guided tour and the tour started Saturday evening. Our group was only 6 people and most of the group was mid 40’s to late 50’s in age (and 4 of us are teachers). It turned out to be a great group and we all got along well. There were 4 Americans, 1 Brit/Aussie and his Brazilian/Indian wife. Our tour guide was a Japanese lady who lived most all of her school years in the states and has traveled more of the world than all the rest of us combined.

My overall impressions of Japan are that it’s an incredibly clean, organized, and rule abiding country. Everyone obeys traffic signals including pedestrians and you rarely see anyone talking on their cell phone on buses, trains or restaurants although they are using the phones for text messages, playing games or to do other things. The people are very polite and generally use soft voices when speaking. Yes, you can really set your watch by the trains and the trains are a great way to travel……so clean and efficient although the subways are incredibly crowded during rush hours and they really push and shove to cram into them. The train stations are also very clean (including the rest rooms) and have tons of places to buy food with much of the food being very good. There are also tons of vending machines in the train stations and everywhere else and they have cigarettes and beer (not too common) in vending machines. One thing I saw very little of in the stations was trash cans which is apparently due to the Serin gas attack they had in a Tokyo train station many years ago. Another thing I saw very few of was places to sit. The trains run so frequently that you rarely wait very long for them. Some of the long distance trains are bullet trains that go up to 180 miles an hour and we were on some that went up to 120 miles an hour. Surprisingly because Japan is such a high tech country, there are not that many atm’s in Japan and most of them have limited operation hours.

Hiroshima was the city that I enjoyed the most as it was big enough to have plenty to do (population of about 1.2 million) but small enough that it was easy to get around. We visited the atomic bomb museum and peace park there and also had a private meeting with a bomb survivor. The museum treats the dropping of the bomb as a singular horrible event and doesn’t do much to put it in the perspective of the entire war. There were about 140,000 people that died in Hiroshima as a result of the bomb and of course the museum mostly focused on the civilian deaths of women and children. After spending about an hour in the museum I found myself wanting to tell the people in charge to tell the rest of the story. There were references to the deaths of the foreign prisoner workers as a result of the bomb and also about the death of 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese as a result of the atrocities committed in Nanjing, China (although they glossed over the brutality of the Japanese soldiers). There was one small mention of the “mistaken national policies” of Japan in starting the war.

The traditional Japanese inns that we stayed in most nights were sparse rooms with tatami mats on the floors and futon mattress on the floor for us to sleep on. The last couple nights which were after the guided tour ended were spent in Osaka where I stayed in a capsule hotel for about $29 per night. Check out the pictures……I slept in the capsule and they have some common areas for you to relax, watch tv, shower, etc. along with a locker room where you store your stuff. Soaking in a hot tub is a big deal there and many hotels have special rooms with big tubs. Below is a detailed list of where we went and what we did provided to us by our tour guide in case you care to read all the gory details (I suspect most of you won’t). We had several non-Japanese meals since 4 of the 6 of us in the group don’t live in our native countries and were hankering for other foods. (Of course you know where I live, my roommate lives in Bangkok, and the married couple lives in Papa New Guinea.)

Sat July 18 – We met in Ueno (part of Tokyo) and went down the street to Japanese modern tapas bar Wara-wara where I ordered and we shared different dishes. After, we went to Shinjuku to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, then had a look around the East Exit, visiting Memory Lane with the yakitori skewer shops.
Sun July 19 – Free day in Tokyo – most of you went to Harajuku to see the girls dressed up, maybe checked out Meiji Jingu Shrine and saw some weddings in there, or Shibuya for Hachiko Crossing (the 8 way crossing) and in the evening we took trains to Nikko
Mon July 20 – Toshogu Shrine in Nikko. We visited the sake brewery in Imaichi before heading to Hipparidako for yakitori.
Tues July 21 – We did a morning walk to Ganmanfuchi Abyss with the rows of Jizo statues, and the walk up to Taki-no-o Shrine before taking the train to Odawara. This is where you went in the food hall of the department store. Then we arrived in Hakone by bus. We took the pirate ship over to Hakone-Machi where we visited the Detached Palace Garden and Cedar Avenue. We went to Hoshi-no-an for dinner (most of us had some sort of soba noodle dish)
Wed July 22 – Sightseeing in Hakone — bus, funicular, cable car, sulphurous vapor erupting area, the Hakone Open Air Museum. Dinner was at Hanasai – our first sitting-on-the-floor experience!
Thurs July 23 – We were trainspotters and arrived in Takayama. Our orientation walk took us to Hida Kokubunji Temple and we split up in the Old Town. We had the lovely included dinner at Asunaro Ryokan. We all went for archery after dinner (Japanese archery is called Kyu-do)
Fri July 24 – Morning Markets, Hida-no-Sato Folk Village, Hamburgers, and boooowwlinnng! 🙂
Sat July 25 – Travel to Hiroshima, dinner at Okonomiyaki Village, the pancakes cooked in front of us (cabbage, konbu seaweed, tempura bits, egg, bean sprouts, optional noodles, bacon). Mac bar for your favorite music requests.
Sun July 26 – out to Miyajima in the rain. Gyukaku for Korean BBQ dinner, drinks at Kemby’s.
Mon July 27 – FREE DAY – you guys went to Otis! For dinner and Kemby’s after.
Tues July 28 – Talk with Kei-san, Hiroshima A-Bomb Survivor. Himeji Castle, Kyoto arrival. Tour of Kyoto Station.
Wed July 29 – Early morning start with walk to Kiyomizu-dera Temple, passing through Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka. Kodaiji and walked through Higashiyama area and Jingu-michi area.
Thurs July 30 – Morning hike at Fushimi Inari Taisha (10,000+ Torii gates), finished up at Tofuku-ji, free afternoon. Met for final night dinner, all-you-can-eat Shabu-shabu and Sukiyaki at Gyuzen.
Added by David: Friday/Saturday – stayed in a “capsule” hotel in Osaka and spent most of the day Saturday in Nara, an old capital of Japan. Visited the Nara National Museum which in addition to its regular stuff also had a special exhibition called “Sacred Ningbo: Gateway to 1300 Years of Japanese Buddhism” which covered the impact that Ningbo, China had on Japanese Buddhism.

Facebook has been blocked here so I haven’t been able to log in for about 5 days. Some of you Facebook users in the states could post a comment letting others know that it’s been blocked here.

About 3 weeks ago I played a small role in a made for tv movie. One of the national tv networks here is making a movie about Deng Xiao Peng, one of the former leaders of China, and needed some foreigners to play French soldiers. That part of the movie took place in 1929 in South China and our scene was very short. A single Chinese man wanted to pass through the road we (French soldiers) were guarding and we refused to allow him. We had rifles and he had nothing but he defeated 7 of us using Kung fu. I was the last soldier and he jumped high in the air and kicked me in the chest causing me to fall backwards to the ground. No, I didn’t have a stunt double but they did put a mat on the ground for me to fall on. The movie is supposed to be shown on national tv in November or December. It took all day to film the scene and they paid me 300 yuan (about $45). I posted some pictures for your enjoyment. Autographed copies may be purchased at davidisnowastar.com.

About a week ago I went to Kunming (the city where I lived last year) for the weekend to visit friends there. It was nice to go back and see everyone there. The weather was nice……not as hot and humid as Nanning but the people there were complaining about it being too hot. The teachers that I worked with there were telling me about how bad the living conditions became at the school there. They said there was construction noise almost 24 hours a day preventing them from being able to sleep and frequent unannounced water outages. I’m so glad I left there to come here as I would not have been happy if I had stayed there. I need my beauty rest!

This week is finals week and after I finish grading the exams and do the paperwork I’ll be on vacation for the summer. On July 16, I’m heading to Japan for 3 weeks, 2 weeks of which will be with a tour group. Then I’ll come back here and do some travel in China assuming I’m not stuck in quarantine due to H1N1 concerns.

I have been busy recently preparing for the final exams and the end of this semester (July 3) and also preparing for next semester. I will teach two different classes next semester: International Business English, and Finance and Accounting English. The second class is a new class that I will develop. At this point I don’t have a textbook for the new class so I will have to find and develop my own materials. It will be a lot of work but I think I will enjoy teaching those subjects much more than teaching Writing.

At the end of May we had the Dragon Boat Festival holiday and I had 4 days off including the weekend. I went to Chongqing which is located in the middle of China. It is a municipality reporting directly to Beijing similar to the District of Columbia in the states. It is about the same size as South Carolina and has about 31 million people with about 5 million being in the central urban area. For comparison, South Carolina has 4.5 million people and the most populous state in the U.S., California has 37 million people. Chongqing is an industrial area with many factories and thus the air there is very bad. Even after a couple days of rain and holidays when the factories should have been closed, the air was very bad. Chongqing became the capital for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists during the second world war when Japan had occupied much of the East Coast of China. It also hosted some American troops during that time as the U.S. was supporting China primarily via the Flying Tigers supply services flying in material via India.

While in Chongqing I visited the Dazu Rock Carvings which are “a series of religious sculptures and carvings, dating back as far as the 7th century A.D., depicting and influenced by Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Listed as a UNESCO World cultural Heritage Site, the Dazu Rock Carvings are made up of 75 protected sites containing some 50,000 statues, with over 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs.” It was about a 2 and ½ hour bus ride to get to the Carvings site. I also visited the Great Hall of the People, the Three Gorges Museum (so-so), and the Ciqikou Ancient Town, a 1000 year old area which is now mostly shops and dining. I also visited the General Stillwell Museum and the Flying Tigers Museum which are located across a small road from each other. Chongqing is famous for its spicy food such as hotpot and its beautiful ladies. The food is definitely spicy; I had a dish that they said was just a little spicy and it almost made my tongue numb….lol. Some of the ladies had skin that was more white but I didn’t think they were any more beautiful than ladies elsewhere in China. The Chinese consider white skin more beautiful. I have posted some pictures of Chongqing so just click on the link on the right hand side to view them.

I will finish with some information I read on the Wall Street Journal website that I found interesting. “China followed this general trend, and has seen its software piracy rate drop from 90% in 2004 to 80% last year, thanks to better enforcement and a government push to encourage the use of legitimate software in its computers. Worldwide average last year was 41% pirated.”