Off the walking trail, because there isn't one.

To celebrate International Labor Day, I went off for a couple of days into the unknown with a few other teachers. After some thorough research (read: one webpage) we took a bus to Jiangjin, a city to the south of Chongqing's center, and from there to Zhongshan Ancient Town via a rickety minibus that kept stopping for more passengers along the road until it was bursting at the seams for all of its 56km drive.

Zhongshan is a well-known Chinese tourist destination for Chongqing residents, but little known to foreigners -- it is home to Anhui-style buildings making up the ancient town alongside the Flying Dragon River, where current residents slice eels in front of you and feed you all kinds of fish. We stayed at a random house that rents out a few beds above the restaurant, and whose entrance room is plastered full of old, faded Mao propaganda posters and faint Party slogans stenciled onto the wall, as well as numerous signs cautioning against smoking in bed, given that one misplaced cigarette would light up the whole town.


View from our room.

Zhongshan from across the river.

There are walking trails leading out to an extensive area of hiking, allowing you to see cascades, rock carvings and the Stairway to Heaven -- 6,000 steps carved into the side of the mountain by a man to show his love for his wife. The unfortunate thing is that due to our inability to read completely inaccurate Chinese maps (they have led me astray many a time before), and coupled with extensive construction on a new hospital right in the middle of what should have been a walking path, we didn't actually see any of it. We did however see a lot of Chinese countryside, as beautiful as it gets in Chongqing with blue skies and an intense sun (rare in and of itself) and sprawling mountains covered in fields of cabbage and rice. That's at least something, right?

Some nice Party propaganda for you all.

Rustic mountains and an actual clear blue sky. Plus temperatures in the high swelterings.