Day 1

Today we left Beijing at 5:55am to catch a flight to  Chongqing.  Beijing Airport was already crowded with travelers.  My doterra on guard sanitizing sprays in my backpack were confiscated, reason was that they contained alcohol.  That was rather disappointing.  Luckily I have more in my carry on luggage that weren’t detected😂. We traveled China Air, service was good!

Arrived in Chongqing! This city is amazing, it is actually the largest city in China with over 30 million people. It is known for its beautiful geography as the city itself is nestled in the mountains with the Yangtze and Jialing rivers running through the city. Fun fact is that the Yangtze river is the third longest river in the world! It was raining today, which was a big relief since temperatures were pretty high last week, the rain brought the temperatures down and also brought in missed and fog which created some great scenery in the mountains of the city.

We checked into Chongqing Meridien Hotel. Then lunch at the hotel. Food was delicious!

After lunch, we hired a car to show us around Chongqing.

Cable Ride

First stop was the cable car across the Yangtze river, starting on one side and going completely across the river to the other side, which gave us a absolutely amazing view of the city and the surrounding scenery. Beautiful! It also gave us great views of the bridges spanning the river, especially the Chaotianmen bridge and the Dong Shui men bridge, both both of which are engineering marvels.

HongYaDong 洪崖洞

One of the most popular cultural and shopping areas to visit in Chongqing is an area called Hong Ya Dong. Buildings in this area were previously used as a fortress during the Ba State period (1046 BC -256BC). More recently, this was a residential area comprising architecture unique to this area with buildings on stilts 吊脚楼 on the side of a mountain. About 20 years ago this was converted into a shopping area and now is one of the most heavily visited area by tourists. This is a great place to stroll around, enjoy the architecture, get some good food, and at night enjoy the light show, which is amazing!

Liziba Station 李子坝轻轨穿楼

This train station is famous in Chongqing and with many visitors to the city because of its unique nature – it runs right through the middle of an apartment building! There has been so much construction in Chongqing, the city planners had to make a decision in this area when the rail line was being extended, whether they would tear down the apartment complex or figure out some other way to get the train through this area. This was what they figured out, run the train right through the seventh and eighth floors of the building. it’s an amazing thing to see and visitors flock outside to take pictures of the train running in one side of the apartment and out the other. The one thing I know is I would not want to live in that apartment building!

White Elephant Residence 白象居

The White Elephant Community is a 24-story residential apartments built in 1993 without elevators. Due to the unique mountain landscape in Chongqing, the building actually has numerous entrance points from various ground floor walk-out levels so you don’t have to climb from the first floor to the 24th floor, rather you can enter at a higher ground floor level closer to your apartment. This building has become a popular tourist attraction and many movies have been filmed at this location.

Hot Pot 长嘉汇江景

Chongqing is known for its spicy cuisine, the most famous of which is hot pot, which originated in this Sichuan city. We traveled to Nan Shan Mountain with a fantastic view overlooking the Yangtze river and the city. On this part of the mountain, they have an area called Hot Pot Street with a bunch of different famous hot pot restaurants. Our hot pot was split into two sections, one mild and one spicy, but even the spicy one was low-grade spicy by Chongqing standards, but extremely spicy to our inexperienced pallets!

Our waiter told us the legend of how hot pot started in Chongqing, apparently over 200 years ago, at one of the busy fishing piers, the sailors and fishermen would take excess fish, leftover meat from local butchers, and various vegetables and boil them altogether in a spicy broth made of oil, chili peppers, and Sichuan peppercorns. They would then take the cooked items out of the broth and dip them in sauce and other condiments. Then some of the vendors started carrying the broth around in pots hanging from bamboo sticks so that they could sell them to anyone who wanted a quick meal on the street.

This is the scenic view from Nan Shan Mountain 南山!It was overcast so not hot but visibility was still pretty good.

Day 2

We checked out from Le Meridien, with our luggage loaded in the back of the car, we set off to visit Dazu Rock Carvings. The distance between Chongqing to Dazu is about 100km; however, due to the Chinese National Holiday hectic traffic, it took us nearly 3 hours to get there, which should have only taken 1 1/2 hours on less busy days.

Dazu Rock Carvings
大足石刻 (世界文化遗产)

Beishan Rock Carvings 北山石窟

Our first stop was at Beishan Rock Carvings. The carvings at this site originally started during the late Tang dynasty around 892 AD when Wei JunJing 韋君靖, a Tang military commander, occupied the area now known as Dazu. He was the first to start these mountain rock carvings, recruiting a number of painters and sculptors to erect statues of Buddha and other Buddhist gods on BeiShan mountain.

Rock Carving of Wei Jun Jing

This is a carving from the late Tang dynasty around 892 AD of Wei JunJing, the Tang military commander who won many battles and also initiated the effort to erect these statues of Buddha and other Buddhist gods on BeiShan mountain.

BaoDing Rock Carvings

Later, during the southern song dynasty, a monk named Zhao Zhifeng continued the cave art in DaZu by building out a significant complex of additional Buddhist sculptures and cave carvings in the area known as Baoding Mountain.

The Wheel of Reincarnation 六道輪迴

In Buddhism, followers believe that your position in the after life is determined based upon your deeds during the present life. There are a total of 6 places one can end up in the next life. If you perform good deeds, you can become a deity or be reincarnated into human form (higher spiritual stature as a reward for having lived a good life previously) in the next life, otherwise the next life of someone who did bad deeds will be reincarnated as animals or just stay as a hungry ghost depending on what kind of bad deeds were performed.

Zhao Zhifeng envisioned rock carvings which would promote human enlightenment and he hired many workers to carve a statue of Avalokitesvara with a thousand hands which was believed to be able to help many people. Many people died while carving the statue due to wars during the end of the Song and beginning of the Yuan dynasties. It took years for the statue to be completed which allowed Zhao to witness the grandeur of the statue.

Throughout this area, there are about 75 Chinese historical preserved sites with roughly 50,000 rock carvings and 100,000 Chinese characters inscriptions. The highlights of the historical sites are Mount Beishan 北山摩崖 and Mount Balding 宝顶山摩 which are located on steep hillsides. The boarding site was listed as UNESCO World Heritage Historical Site in 1999.

While it can take an hour or two to get to these sites, I would say that it is definitely worth it. I would prioritize the mount Baoding site because it has a great tourist center, including a couple of different movie theaters with different movies providing historical background and pretty impressive cinematography before you go out to visit the actual site. Watching the movies and climbing the mountain will take between 2 to 4 hours depending on how much time you spend examining the statues and carvings (and also how busy it is, if you go on a national holiday like we did, plan for it to be extremely packed, which doubles the time to get there and get through the various sites).

Day 3

Sunyata Resort

Our hotel in Chongqing is amazing with spectacular views. It’s also built on the site of a historical building used as the residence of the US Military attache in the 1940s.

The Sunyata Resort Hotel is located in an area of Chongqing called Long Men Hao Old Street 龙门浩老街. The building was previously the site of the China Trust Bank, as well as a villa for US Embassy military officers, and a China Customs Building. It is a beautiful traditional villa built on the side of a mountain overlooking the Jialing River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, and the commercial area of Chongqing across the river. Although one of the downsides is that this is such a popular tourist destination that there are always local tourists lined up at the entry gate to the villas to pose and take pictures at the villa gate with the scenic Chongqing background behind them.

Long Men Hao Old Street 龙门浩老街

The Chinese get 10 days of holiday during their Independence Day on 10/1 and everywhere is extremely busy during these times.

We had spicy Szechuan noodles at a local noodle restaurant by the hotel at Long Men Hao Old Street.

It was very delicious and only about US$20 for 4 of us, 4 bowls of noodles, 3 orders of desserts, and a side of fried dumplings.

Raffles City

We walked across Jialing Bridge from the hotel to get to Raffles City for dinner at a great Sichuan restaurant overlooking the river. It took us about 30 mins to walk there while taking a cab would have been at least an hour due to heavy traffic.

Dinner at 俏园 was wonderful.

After dinner, we enjoyed a 75 min foot massage and ear cleaning/ rejuvenation. We have done a ton of foot massages, especially back when we lived in Beijing, but this is the first time we had the experience of ear rejuvenation, pretty interesting but not a fan! Kevan was very nervous, didn’t like the idea of a stranger poking in his ears!

Day 3

Another amazing breakfast at the hotel, loved it, we couldn’t recommend Sunyata resort any more highly, the location is fantastic, the staff and service are wonderful, the accommodations are modern but located in a historic building, it’s a perfect combination for anyone visiting the wonderful city of Chongqing. The hotel staff even brought me a herbal medicine drink to soothe my acidic stomach and it seems to be working.

Today, we have to check out at 1pm to embark on the Yangtze Cruise at 4pm. The hotel was kind enough to serve us a delicious lunch in the private courtyard while waiting for pickup for the cruise!

Chong Shan Si Lu 中山四路 ( 重慶最美街道)

This is one of the places I had on my list of priority destinations but unfortunately, we had way too much fun at the other places and never quite got there. It’s still on the list for next time.

Chong Shan Zi Lu is said to be the most beautiful street in Chongqing spanning about 1km. Qui Yuen (桂园) is located on this street which was once a residence of a military officer Chang Zhi Chong (张治中)and was often used as a meeting place for the communist revolutionaries Chou En Lai ( 周恩来) and Mao Tze Dong (毛澤東) for negotiations and settlement discussions. It has now been converted into the Hong Yan Revolutionary Memorial Hall 紅岩杏革命纪念馆.

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