Other Cities
Chongqing
is a mountainside city located at the confluence of the Yangtze and
Jialing Rivers and was once known as Chungking. This city has been a
bustling port and major center of commerce throughout China’s
history. During WW II Chongqing was capitol of Nationalist
China (1938-’45). Nicknames
often applied to the city are Mountain City and River City.
With
a population of over 3 million, the mountainous and river metropolis
is China’s 7th
largest city. The 300-year-old city has a significant historical,
cultural, economic and political importance. It was here that Chiang
Kai-shek
and Chow En-Lai made the famous agreement to jointly fight the
Japanese rather than each other during WWII. Japanese bombers did do
a considerable amount of damage
to the city.
Today
it is a city of contrasts. Undergoing a rapid transformation, it is
quickly becoming a vibrant and modern city, a city with skyscraper
fever. A city full of cars, but because of the very hilly terrain
hardly a bike was seen, which was a big change from what we’d seen
elsewhere in the country. The
Three Gorges Dam will make
Chongqing a major deep-water port.
We
were within easy walking distance of Xian’s
Big Goose Pagoda, built in
648 AD. Earthquakes in 1487 and 1521 knocked off the top two stories
of the pagoda so now it is only seven stories and 209-feet high. It
has been restored, remodeled, and added to many times over the
centuries. It was built to hide Buddhist scriptures brought from
India to be translated into 1335 Chinese volumes!
The
courtyard is large and from the street very deceiving. The pagoda is
Buddhist. Monks are basically vegetarian. In China there are 13,000
Buddhist temples, 30,000 Muslim mosques, 4000 Catholic churches,
12,000 Protestant churches and 1500 Taoist temples, which are usually
built on mountain tops as they don’t like the human world. Xian's
warriors are in a post noted below
A
visit to the Beijing Opera
School was a delight. A
local docent told us, “The government established the school in
1952. Prior to that, it was a private school. This best school in
the country started out with a one story building. Now we are a high
rise residential school with 3600 graduates. Children can come here
at age 10 and stay for six years.”
We
worked our way through a small museum where there were many manikins
dressed in ornate opera costumes. We visited several classrooms and
were quite impressed with the students’ abilities that we observed.
We learned that Chinese opera has four characters—young man, old
man, woman, and clown.
Our
Yangtze river boat docked at Wanzhou, the gateway to Sichuan. It was
an easy walk up 120 steps that were perfect for pacing and narrow in
depth. After working our way though many hawkers we boarded a bus
that took us first to the Acrobatic
Theater. The show performed
by children was excellent. They preformed some remarkable stunts.
Some of them were so young and they performed such fantastic stunts!
Because we were delayed leaving
Tibet we were late arriving in Chongqing to board our river boat.
Instead of taking the time to stop for dinner our guide phoned the
ship and they had dinner waiting for us on arrival. We ate even
before we made it to our staterooms. It had been a long day.
see
post: Xian 11-10-11, and Hutong 5-2-10
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