batgirldrivesbatmobile >In China!: It's Monday!

I didn't shower for three days, and my fellow passengers were starting to stink.

We started our trip early Sunday morning. Leaving our apartment in the dark of the morning, my roommate and I walked to the street corner where we were met by a cab. We shoved our bags in the back, and directed the driver to Sichuan University. He dropped us off a few minutes early, so Sarah took off to see if our other classmate, Matthew was awake. We'd been calling him all morning to make sure he woke up on time, but so far had no luck. A bus was waiting for us; I hopped in and pointed the driver in the direction Sarah had just run. Pretty soon we were all nestled in the back of the minibus driving around Chengdu picking up fellow passengers.

After about an hour, we pulled up to a bus stop and were directed to a larger bus. We threw our stuff underneath, and again piled into the back.

The bus ride from Chengdu to Chongqing was about four hours. Every hour or so, the bus would pull over and let everyone out for a squat pot break. The highway passed through farmland and towns, we went through small valleys and over large hills. After living in no-hills Chengdu, the change of scenery was a welcome one.

Chongqing (pronounced Chong Ching) lies sprawled out over several large hills overlooking the Yangtze. It was foggy the day we arrived, but I suspect that like all the places I've been so far, it's "foggy" most of the time.

We were met at the bus stop by an English speaking guide. In reality, she was a travel agent who was there to sell us on all the different tour options we could buy. It worked out well though, we booked a tour of the Three Gorges Dam, train and bus tickets from her. After taking care of business we left in search of Carrefour, the French version of Wal-Mart.

We bought a ton of supplies and made our way back to the travel agency where we were led down to the river by one of the agents.

Because the water level is rising, the ships are not moored onto permenant docks. Instead, there is a series of barges roped together. You must walk barge-to-barge, and then ship-to-ship until you can board your own.

We opted to take one of the cruises designed for Chinese tourists. The Westerner cruise takes place on the classy Victoria. We however, sailed on the #7.

My classmates and I booked a third-class cabin, meaning we would be sharing with three other people.

The cruise wasn't large; maybe four-hundred passengers in total. It had a small restaurant and bar that were only open at meal times. The ship was old; the steel floors were warped and uneven. One got the impression that the ship had already sunk, and was somehow hauled back to the surface to be put to use once again.

A mother, father, and their daughter whose English name was Lily were our fellow cabin mates. Lily is in sixth grade, and wants to be a singer when she grows up. At one point during the trip she even sang for us. She was good. Really good.

We left Chongqing that evening. The city's skyline was an amazing show of laser lights and neon. We all crowded out of our rooms and pushed our way out of steerage to the upper decks. I stood on the second floor deck and let the wind blow across my face.

"You can't come up here. You don't have the card." I looked to my right. A steerage cop stood there, glaring at me. She had the look of a hardened lunch lady. She'd seen all the tricks, and there was no way I was going to get past her. She stuck her hand out, "The card is 55 kuai."

I snorted and retreated back to steerage. I waited for a moment and watched as my classmates were also kicked out. We stood at the bottom of the stairs for a moment before coming to a decision.

"Let's just sneak past her. I don't see why we should have to pay. Honestly, sneaking past her will make this trip all the more fun." We waited a few minutes, and then proceeded back up the stairs. This time, we were allowed to stay on deck a few minutes before we were finally sent back to steerage.

It wasn't until the next day that we discovered that we needed the 55 kuai card in order to enter the bar, have a seat on deck, go to the restaurant, or spend any amount of time outside of steerage. Eventually, the lack of seats in steerage drove us to forking over the money.

The first stop we made was at the Ghost City Temple. Here's some pictures:

The rest of the first day was spent on the boat. We were the only Americans on board. There was one other Westerner, a teacher named Jess. She's from Great Britian, and had already spent the better part of a year in China. We fast made friends.

Life on the upper decks is pretty casual. Everyone sits on plastic stools and sips tea as they watch the scenery go by.

We were pretty popular, and made a lot of new Chinese friends. Actually, if we stood around for too long, we became the subjects of people's photographs.

Everyday we were awakened early in the morning by our tour guide who rounded us like cattle and made sure we got off the boat on time.

The afternoon of the third day we went on a tour of the Little Three Gorges and the Little Little Three Gorges. That morning we had passed through the first of the Three Gorges.

We were taken off the cruise ship and led to smaller boats that would take us into the small gorges. They were beautiful!

On the return trip, several of our fellow passengers just had to talk with us. One man from Harbin kept asking questions about American politics. He spoke with such a heavy accent, that even if we could answer him, we still wouldn't have understood him. After about five minutes of him yelling questions about Bin Laden and George Bush at us, some other passengers came by and started "interpreting" what he was saying. Pretty soon we had a crowd of Chinese people all yelling at each other and at us. My classmates and I just sat and stared. I kept trying to look away and make it obvious I didn't want to talk, but they were having none of it. All was not in vain however, we were invited to join them for dinner on board the cruise ship.

We met the gentleman(?) in the restaurant. There was already a table full of food, and I noticed he was carrying a bottle of Chinese rice wine (Baijiu), also known as "satan's brew." I'd heard of this tradition before, and was warned that I would probably have to take part in one of these rice wine drinking banquets.

As we sat down to eat, he pulled out small plastic cups and filled them to the brim with baijiu. Then he started toasting us. I took a tiny sip of the wine and recoiled in horror. The stuff was painful. It didn't quite burn, it was almost sweet. I continued taking baby sips, each one tasting worse than the one before. Finally during one toast, Sarah and I looked at each other and gulped the entire thing.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was very near drunk. Meanwhile, our host had broken out the preserved meat products and was using his chopsticks to fill my bowl with them. The dinner went on like this for about another hour. By the time I felt steady enough to stand up, our hosts were paying the bill. I pushed away from the table, waiting for the sloshing in my stomach to settle, and walked outside.

It was strange, I was clear-headed but I could still feel the baijiu sloshing around in my stomach. I sat on the back deck amid the smokers, while the boat rocked, and my stomach churned with spam and alcohol.

We got off the boat early the next day. We had bought tickets for a tour of the damn dam. Once again, we booked one of the Chinese tours, meaning we spent the morning running around from scenic spot to scenic spot, taking as many pictures as we could manage before we were herded back onto the bus.

Here's a picture of me beautifying the dam.

The last day of our trip was spent in Wuhan. We read up in a guidebook that Mao Zedong had a villa in the city. We asked our hotel clerks about buses, and headed off in search of Mao's pad. As it turned out, the place was closed. I did get some good pictures of the road to Mao's place and the city.