We are up at five o’clock this morning for our flight from Guilin to Chongqing. We will then catch our cruise boat for the trip down the Yangtze River. We have a full day in the city now, due to changes in flight timetables, much longer than anticipated when we first booked. Our new guide John meets us at the airport and escorts us to the car. He appears a little miserable and seems that he does not enjoy joining in casual conversation, restricting himself to providing facts about the city. He tells us it is China’s largest city by population, thirty three million people live here. As the city is surrounded on all sides by mountains the people are crowded into thousands upon thousands of high rise towers some fifty stories high, all of them of grey concrete. He informs us that the city was devastated by the Japanese Air Force in the Second World War and there are no historical sights remaining as in other Chinese cities.
He takes us first to an old part of the city, the Ci Qi Kou area with narrow streets and shops of all kinds. We get some pepper and aniseed here, very cheap. As am suffering with a touch of the Beijing belly today I avoid food and restrict myself to some Jasmine tea at a lunch stop. My fellow traveller has a club sandwich, complete with a fried egg. My We stroll around for a bit more and meet John at a statue a bit later as arranged.
Off again we are now taken to the Guildhall now a museum, with part of the old city wall at its perimeter. We are partnered up with a young girl, twenty years old studying hotel management. She normally works at the Sheraton, a confection of a building consisting of two golden gift wrapped towers. She works part time at the museum here as she is able to speak English which she learnt from watching western films (not Western films with cowboys, but films from the West). She is a very happy girl, and goes so far as to make jokes. She points to the wall, then her eye, and then her knee saying “wall eye knee” Chinese for I love you. We leave her with one of our Chinese/Wales lapel pins, wishing we had brought one of our Cymru notebooks for her.
Now on to the city centre, the downtown area. The area here is exclusively high rise buildings occupied by high-end western retail companies. Gucci, Rolex, Omega, Dolce & Gabana, Moschino and lots of others abound. There is even a new branch of Debenhams. We enter one complex to be met by salesgirls selling diamond jewellery. They are over us like a rash. We move quickly though and out to the street again. Looking in the shops we do not see any customers at all. We are curious enough to ask John when we meet later what the average man in the street thinks about this development which seems to be for the benefit of the few who have wealth and not the average man in the street let alone the poor. He is dismissive saying that there are many in the city who have money so they have the shops. He is missing the point, and I am left thinking he is doing so on purpose not wishing to give any impression of disagreement with what is going on.
We leave the city centre and move on to the cruise ship terminal now. Leaving the taxi we are met with a man with a bamboo pole who proceeds to attach our luggage to the pole with lengths of old string. That done he is off, trotting along briskly to the waiting line of ships. We lose sight of him in the throng of people, which gives my fellow traveller some cause for concern, but we see him later returning with only his pole having deposited our luggage safety at the security check at the ship dock. John is unphased by this, but becomes a bit agitated as the check in opens and he wrestles with our baggage rather than let us carry it ourselves. On board the ship now, we present passports and have our picture taken for security and are given a hard sell about an upgrade. We decide first to see our assigned cabin. We then look at a suite, for an upgrade cost of US$300. We like the look of the upgrade but not the cost. The lady showing us the cabin goes away with our counter offer to consult her boss. She returns confirming that our offer is acceptable, but it is secret, we must not tell anyone how much we paid. I am true to my word so I am not going to tell you. We arrange our gear in the cabin and wash up for dinner. By now my jippy issue seems to have resolved itself so we are in the mood for dinner.
After dinner we are summoned to a group presentation in the main bar which covers safety and the facilities and services on board the ship. We have massage, a Chinese doctor able to perform a variety of alternative medicines a couple of shops, a resident artist and two photographers named Tom and Jerry. I don’t believe that. Our “Cruise Director” is a European lady with a rather pronounced German accent seventeen years a resident in China. Later in the cabin I cannot resist from impersonating her, and advising my companion what will happen to her if she does not do as she is instructed by the ship staff. As we cast off from the quayside and we watch from our balcony there are many brightly lit ships going up and down the Yangtze. We retire with the ship proceeding peacefully along, with only a slight throb of the engines in the background.
Oh, and please remember “The Trials Of A Long Journey Always Feeling, Civilised Travel Passed Reputation”.