37: 重庆

Before I came to China, I saw a picture of a gorgeous city. It was Chongqing, and I quickly became obsessed with the Chongqing skyline. As a matter of fact, the specific reason why I wanted to go to Southwest China over winter break was to see Chongqing. So, after we visited Guiyang, we hopped on a bus to Chongqing. Despite my utter excitement, I fell asleep. The next time I woke up, we were in a brightly lit plaza in Chongqing.

In the weeks leading up to my trip, I talked to some of the staff members about my upcoming destinations. I would tell them that I was going to Yunnan, Guizhou, and then Chongqing. Their reactions would start off as excited for Yunnan, confused for Guizhou (why are you going to China’s poorest province? There’s nothing there to see!) to absolute shock for Chongqing. Why would you want to go to Chongqing? It’s too hilly. The rice there is terrible. There’s so much crime. The mayor wants to revert the city back to a Mao Zedong era. Unfortunately, these people didn’t realize they were talking to someone who wants to live in Venusville in Total Recall or the Capital in Hunger Games. The more I heard about how Chongqing was the hub for drug trafficking and human trafficking due to its location and how ignored it was by the Sichuan government, the more it fed into my urban dystopia fantasies.

Of course, the Chongqing I experienced was not full of drug trips and journeys into the seedy underbelly of gang society. But Chongqing was still an amazing time for me. The tall high-rises scraping the sky, the Liberation monument sandwiched between two gigantic new buildings marking the Chongqing World Trade Center, and the fish market across from the new Carrefour all delighted the Asian Studies major in me. The expressways built precariously over the river, and the monorail system perched up on the cliffs made the city much more unique in my mind. I loved that the city felt like New York City, San Francisco, and China all rolled into one.

One of the things that I owe to Chongqing was a realization that popped into my head while I rode on the cable car across. If you look at a map of Chongqing, the urban area, as well as the historical area, is concentrated in the Yuzhong Peninsula. I was struck by how undeveloped or recently developed the areas across the river from the Peninsula were. As a matter of fact, there are only 4 bridges connecting the Yuzhong Peninsula to the Jiangbei and Nan’an Districts across the river, and all bridges were set further back than would be expected (from a Westerner’s point of view). There were two new bridges being built in the forward part of the Peninsula, where one would expect bridges. My realization was this: the quirk of the Chinese city was that the Chinese saw a specific outline of a city as the only place where a city could exist, and never thought anything outside of it could be developed as part of the same place. It wasn’t until the 21^st century, when there was an influx of money and people that governments started reaching out to the neighboring areas to develop and expand. After the development, the most expensive property is always within the old city, despite new buildings. In Beijing, the most expensive property is within the Second Ring Road. In Chongqing, it is the Yuzhong Peninsula. It was also around this time that I pretty much decided I was in love with cities and I wanted to study cities for grad school.

The fact that Chongqing was still the last Guomindang stronghold ensured that it would be an important historical site for anyone obsessed with the GMD. In a weird twist, all the GMD sites are now propaganda sites for the Communist party. For example, Laurence and I trekked out to Gele Mountain Martyrs’ Memorial. It did not disappoint. Gele Mountain was where the GMD held all its Communist POWs, and then brutally massacred them as the Communists were invading. We toured where the POWs were kept and where various GMD generals were staying. The creepiest part of the tour was the graveyard, with poetry by the individual carved onto the gravestones. We toured the museum, which displayed each individual Communist, with a personal history and name. Later, we went to where Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai lived during the Communists’ alliance with the GMD. There was no GMD sight that was untouched by the Communists.

All I really wanted to do in Chongqing was to take in the city. My favorite moment was taken directly out of a hipster Zooey Deschanel movie moment. Laurence and I got out at the Liziba subway stop, and exhausted, we decided to just sit down for a while. We sat at some benches facing the Jialing River, and the Jiangbei District across from us. After travelling together 24/7 for a week and a half by then, we had nothing to say to each other. We just sat, looked across the river and took in the buildings around us. The best cities can captivate you. The best cities can make some stupid moment like this into a special one. I’m going back to Chongqing this May with my sister, and I am incredibly excited for it. Hopefully we have plenty of stupid moments for the city to change for us.