This weekend, our friend and classmate, Carlos, visited Lucia and I here in Chongqing. He's living in Chengdu for the summer, working at the Chengdu Institute of Urban Planning and Design. Chongqing and Chengdu are very close cities, and Lucia and I plan to return the visit in a couple of weeks. Having a guest gave us a chance to show off Chongqing, to see some of the tourist attractions we haven't been to yet, and to trade stories about living in central China as a foreigner.
On Saturday, we visited the Chongqing Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. They had some pretty neat scale models of the city and the region, but I won't bore you with more photos of tiny buildings. If you really want to see them, feel free to email me and I'll send them your way.
The Exhibition Hall is right under the plaza at ChaoTianMen, which is the tip of the peninsula that makes up the Yuzhong District (downtown) of Chongqing.
Lots of people sell stuff at the ChaoTianMen plaza, most notably, some awesome kites and tickets for all the cruise ships that circle around the Yangtze River and the Jialin River (to the south and north of the peninsula, respectively). Despite some significant language-barrier issues, we managed to haggle the price down for some nighttime boat tickets on a "4-star" boat. We were not disappointed. (Sorry for the blurry photos - only had my phone camera on me!)
 |
| Kites at ChaoTianMen |
 |
| Lucia and Carlos, excited for our boat ride |
 |
| The decoration atop our "4-Star" cruise boat |
 |
| I think this was the "5-Star" option...More lights? |
 |
| JieFangBei by night |
Sunday, we decided to check out Chongqing's famous cable car. The cable car
took a break in 2011, but was apparently put back into action in 2012. I can't find any information about why the city decided against demolishing it, but the cable car is a great attraction. It costs 5 yuan to cross (one direction), which isn't much more expensive than the metro. It was initially built to help relieve some of the congestion on the single bridge that connected the Yuzhong District peninsula to the districts north and south. Since the 1970s, there have been additional bridges built (and more underway), along with the subway, which renders the cable cars slightly...antiquated (at least in the minds of the forward-thinking transportation planners of Chongqing!). While the cable car that crosses the Jialin River remains inoperative, the Yangtze River cable car is up and running. It seems to be a popular tourist attraction as well as a functioning mode choice for commuters, so, ultimately, Chongqing made the right call in opening this option back up.
 |
| Boarding the cable car |
 |
| Apartment buildings to the west of the cable car |
 |
| Older style of housing, to the east of the cable car |
 |
| The Sheraton Hotel towers across the Yangtze, and some mountains |
 |
| Looking north across the Yangtze River, towards JieFangBei |
No comments:
Post a Comment