<A> Chongqing's Shapingba

The Path Less Travelled in Chongqing

Travel Tips:
Entry to Martyr's Park and Ciqikou: Free
Taxi to Shapingba from central train station: around 40 yuan or 30 by moto
CHONGQING's weather is hot soup in midsummer, and is best visited in the spring

Every good traveller knows instinctively that the most rewarding destinations and tourist attractions are often not the most obvious; common backpackers content themselves with the recommendations of their guidebooks and otherwise stay in their cosy hostels, whereas those more determined amongst us make the effort to seek out more enduring and memorable sights than those that are merely pretty. When travelling in China, the benchmark is more often than not what the Chinese call ren qi - which roughly translates as "human atmosphere". There's much more to be learnt about China in a raucous dining hall or bustling market than there is to be found in an overdecorated temple selling five yuan Buddhas.

Chongqing is such a destination, for several compelling reasons. First of all, it is uniquely situated both geographically and historically - central Chongqing rests, or rather towers, on a narrow, rocky peninsula at a crucial junction of the Yangtse river, and as the stronghold of the diminishing Kuomintang Nationalist Party during China's civil war was the centre of considerable political cunning and intrigue. Central Chongqing is awe-inspiring in scale: standing on the banks of the great river and looking up the steep slope to the crest of the peninsula is probably a far more relevant perspective of the immensity of the Chinese engineering vision than would be the Great Wall. Gigantic glass towers in their hundreds perch on the natural rock, long since carved into a labyrinth of winding alleyways of dark river stone.

Every large city has its share of pollution, but Chongqing's perpetual mist owes more to natural causes than bad air. The city is well known as the 'Capital of Mists' as well as the 'Mountain City' by virtue of its location amidst the vast mountainous terrain surrounding this stretch of the Yangtse. Wandering about Chongqing is literally walking through the clouds, and the sun is rarely seen except as a glistening white coin hiding in the obscured skies. This is commonly cited as the reason why the locals are blessed with such fine skin, being suspended in a perpetual moisture spa and protected from direct solar radiation.

Having already paid my respects to the conventional backpacker's fare in Chongqing in an earlier, and regrettably rushed visit - notably the monument to liberation and the view of the river at the head of the peninsula at Chaotianmen - I decided to venture further out and dig deeper into the greater metropolitan area. Chongqing has broadened immeasurably since its early days as a village between two river banks, and in terms of area and population it is already one of China's goliaths. A cursory write-up in a foreign guidebook could hardly cover a city of this size, and so I decided to ask a local.

When you're trying to find the most visually intoxicating sights in any place, the best person to ask is never a tour guide, but an artist. I had arranged to meet He Fang, a Fine Arts student who used to earn a living as a streetside portrait artist, prior to my arrival. I asked her to take me to where Chinese visitors to Chongqing might wish to go, but to where Western tourists were unlikely to be seen. The destination of choice would take me to Shapingba - one of Chongqing's secondary city centres, in the locality of which is to be found several of Chongqing's lesser-known attractions.

Shapingba district makes up a large portion of Chongqing's West side, and an uninitiated visitor might be forgiven for thinking that central Shapingba is an independent city in its own right - for the main shopping and business district around Three Gorges Square is as well developed as that of any city of average size elsewhere in the country. Just over half an hour by bus from the central city (2.5 yuan), Shapingba's great pedestrian malls are often so crowded it's hard to get through the rush, and being in the neighbourhood of Chongqing's principal universities, the young and the beautiful are everywhere and the entertainment on offer, a plethora of bars, theatres, discos and cafes, is directed at this dynamic market.

He Fang leads me to a motorbike stand and negotiates a fare for carrying the both of us to the nearby Revolutionary's Memorial Park, a small public square dedicated to the memory of one of the Civil War's most notorious crimes: when the Nationalist Party was defeated by the Communists, the Kuomintang slaughtered their prisoners of war instead of having them released. Motorbike taxis are the most common means of transport in Chongqing after busses; they are cheaper than the regular yellow taxis and will usually fit two people as well as the driver. He Fang managed to beat him down to almost half the price he'd asked for, and we set off for less than the price it would normally cost me to get into a normal taxi.

It's said that there are no traffic laws in Chongqing, and locals claim that this makes the roads safer. This may be half true: though the mototaxi driver took corners faster than I would have been comfortable with, he seemed unusually alert to pedestrians and other cars similarly driving according to will rather than regulations. The roads are a cacophony or car horns, and they are generally paid attention to as the most reliable way of telling where everyone else actually is, rather than where they are supposed to be. We sailed across a massive overpass, a nest of writhing roadways like enormous twisting snakes.

Gele Mountain Memorial Park is a quiet affair nestled in a tight cluster of forested mounts on the outskirts of Shapingba, right in the vicinity of the city's Political Sciences and Foreign Language Universities. A broad stairway leads down from the roadside into the main courtyards where troupes of locals were practicing aerobics in synchronised rows. He Fang and I wandered across the broad spaces towards the immense Martyr's statue, as she related to me the stories of Kuomintang war crimes committed in the area, including the uncommonly cruel torture methods they'd use on suspected Communist cadres. A great slope laid in gigantic Chinese political flags led upwards to the statue, a mass of human figures with resilient and defiant expressions. It seemed morbidly in accord with the huge mass grave behind its base, where hundreds of nameless prisoners were buried. I stood sombrely at the grave's edge, but was distracted by the young university students who'd come to take advantage of the relative seclusion at the back of the park to make out: I had to admit they made a nice contrast to the concentration on death.

He Fang led me back to the roadside and out to the front of the Political Sciences University where we got on a public bus for our next destination - Ciqikou, a small town preserved in its original character at the banks of the Jialing River, which flows into the Yangtse back at the tip of peninsular Chongqing. Ciqikou has been preserved in memory of the Communist Resistance, which secretly convened at strategically private points along its labyrinthine streets. He Fang led me to the upper rear entry to the Ciqikou streetways where most tourists don't bother to reach, and where locals quietly get on with their everyday lives in quiet, antique homes.

The contrast in architecture was apparent from the moment we entered Ciqikou. Grey, solid concrete apartment blocks appropriate to Chongqing's perpetual murk gave way to elegant white walls set in dark woodwork with stylised roofs of intensely detailed Chinese tiling. Ornate wooden lanterns with colourful Chinese scenes painted on small paper windows hung from the corners of sloping rooftops and on street corners, as the stone-laid stairwells (stairways being one persistent feature throughout Chongqing) led upwards through the narrow alleyways, small, bright leaves growing between the slabs of marble. Locals selling vegetables from makeshift tables, large wooden crates laid with white sheets, stood before great dark-green wooden doors and windows framed in light blue panels, opening from stone walls. Upper-storey windows were ornately carved and set in dark blue glass. We passed an old man in a deep blue Zhongshan jacket sitting reading classic literature on an old, bamboo armchair.

We climbed the ascending stair-laid path through the old streets, passing locals washing clothes in great tubs, quiet tea houses and the occasional carved marble lion, until we began to reach the more commercial area. Several art and antique shops opened out to a throng of visitors in central Ciqikou - but the atmosphere they created was more of a happy convention of trade, rather than the spoilsome marketeering common to other tourist sites around China. In fact, the busy bartering and cheer precisely matched the surroundings, and we happily browsed the lines of stores selling traditional wares and treats. He Fang insisted I try a local sweet: we stopped at one stall where an unassuming young man sat cradling a wok of melted toffee. He Fang spun a disc set into his table: the arrow spun through its circle of painted animals until it came to rest, pointing at a deer. The young man dipped a broad spoon into the caramel and slowly tipped it into a wide palette, following the shape of the deer until the syrup hardened. He pressed a stick into the deer shape and handed it over to her. He Fang asked me what my Chinese animal sign was, and I answered that it was the Rabbit. The vendor, however, claimed he couldn't draw a rabbit and sat sullenly despite He Fang's insistent entreats. I suggested that, being a Fine Arts student, she teach the toffee man how to draw the rabbit, and he reluctantly handed over the old spoon to my delighted friend, who expertly poured my toffee rabbit onto his board, and for a while he bemusedly suffered He Fang's lesson in the particulars of rabbit art. The result, at least, was delicious.

Before long, we reached the great red wooden riverside archway at Longyinmen Gate. The sudden opening into the misty river was a dramatic climax to the walk through Ciqikou: the river stretched majestically across the horizon, great ferryboats moored at the bank heaved on the currents as distant crowds of travellers and river labourers threaded across the shoreline. A splendid red temple leaned right up the mountainside to our left above us and the late afternoon sun just above its eaves burned amber in the mist. Far below to our right, an open-air restaurant was serving tables with cool tea and Sichuanese chillied meats as a small ensemble of traditional musicians plucked and drew out classical melodies. It was one of those perfect moments of travelling: nothing was posed or on display, and this unpretensive vision of simple human elegance was quite unforgettable.