AinoInChina

måndag 20 december 2010

Wushu mountains and Little Three Gorges area

Yesterday I came home to Chongqing from trip to Wushu mountains and Little Three Gorges area. This area is located in north east part of Chongqing province.

After about six hours drive through countryside we arrived to Wanzhou city where we spent our first night in a hotel. Next morning we continued driving to Wuxi old town and Wushan along mountain roads. Interesting places on the way ... misty mountains, old and new architecture, street life in towns and villages, coffins placed high up on steep mountain slopes, green rivers, coal fields, salt water running out from cliffs, orange fields and many more bright colored oranges to be sold along the road. The color of oranges was like a shining sun, accent color in otherwise greyish and brownish landscape.

On sunday morning we travelled with a small boat along Daning river. It was really cold but it was so beautiful views that I forgot that I was freezing. It was really amazing, adventurous boat trip. The boat was ice cold, worn and with cracked glass panes. Now and then the boat crashed with stones and 'raised the value of the adventure'. Travellers in the boat was our small group of foreigners, some Chinese tourists and some local people travelling from one place to another with the boat.

Some Chinese people say that if you have visited Huanshan = Yellow mountains in Anhui province, you will not have desire to see other mountains any more. Well, I have seen Huanshan and still can be impressed by Wushan mountains.

fredag 10 december 2010

One month left, Uppdating my website and Working on my blog

About one month is left of my stay in Chongqing, southwest China. I will leave Chongqing 14th january 2011 and stay couple days in Beijing before I fly home to Stockholm, Sweden 16th of january 2011. I want to see Forbidden city again. I booked room in nice hotel in Beijing and hope to have pleasant stay there before I leave China. I see forward to take a nice bath in bathtub ...

I have not been having time and energy to uppdate my blog for a while but today I have put some new photos from my trip to Beijing about month ago. I also made uppdate for my web site www.creativerooms.se so now one can read some information in english. I hope to be able to uppdate with chinese version soon.

Last weekend I visited Dazu county with some friends and saw magnificent buddhist stonecarvings in caves ... Sleeping Buddha etc. It was beautiful place and worth a visit.

fredag 19 november 2010

Time flies ... Shopping and new adventures with Motorcykel TAXI

Time flies ... and it's not long time left of my stay here in Chongqing.
Flight is booked in the middle of january 2011. I miss home but I know that
I'm also going to miss some things I have experienced here during my stay
in Chongqing, for example "Dragons eyes" (sweet fruit), small oranges,
good tea, cheap and relaxing foot massage, shouting on mountains, etc.

Last weekend I stayed home and was busy painting a large canvas and doing other stuff. This weekend I want to move around in city! Yesterday I visited huge shopping mall 'Paradise road' with it's all modern shops and found familiar names like H&M (Hennes & Mauritz), Mango and many other famous brands. I found a shop called Uniqlo and have found out that it's japanese company. I bought two nice wool swaters with cashmere and warm and cozy reversible fleece jacket with furlike material on the other side. Afterwards I came home with taxi buying some food on my way at METRO shop.

Later in the afternoon I went downtown, Jiefangbei, by bus (always adventure) and walked around in shopping malls untill I was too tired to try to find boots I was searching for. It's getting cooler and I would like to find nice looking warm boots. Many chinese women seems to like lot of decoration even in their shoes but I hope to find boots that has more 'minimalistic' style. We'll see if I succeed with my 'boot hunt' today.

Yesterday evening I was particularly adventurous and took motorcykle taxi back home from Jiefangbei. It was fun even though the driver stopped in the middle of mountain road and started complaining to some student girls who translated to me that he thinks that I'm going too far and he want more paid. Because I know by now what taxi fee is to downtown and motorcykle taxi is cheaper so he finally drove me home and didn't leave me in the middle of mountain road.

Well ... it's a new day and new adventures are waiting!

söndag 7 november 2010

Beijing, Chengdu and Chongqing

Couple of weeks ago I visited Beijing during weekend and also met my daughter and her boyfriend travelling around China for three weeks. It was interesting trip and we visited Forbidden city, Mutianyu - Great wall, Ming tombs, silk and jade factories, got some footmassage, met tibetan/chinese doctor and walked around taking lot of photos and eating spicy foods.

One evening we witnessed interesting episode in a restaurant while waiting our food. In kitchen area we saw very big fish jumping on the floor and several persons trying to catch it. Fish was supposed to be dinner to somebody. One can see lot of living animals in restaurants to garantee that the ingredients are fresh when you order your dinner.

Also in supermarkets it can look like kind of akvarium with living fish, lobsters, frogs and all kind of other animals that you can buy and take with you home for dinner.

Forbidden city was mighty and there was so many beautiful and fascinating details in architecture and objects shown there. Weather was horrible with hard wind, rain and we were freezing but still it was exciting place to visit. I really hope to be able to visit and explore the place several times.

Last weekend my daughter and her boyfriend was visiting me here in Chongqing and during saturday we made daytrip to Chengdu located west from CQ. Now I was able to experience travelling by train here in China and it was like travelling by train in Sweden. This fast train
to Chengdu was really modern and travelling was very comfortable. It only took about two hours to get there.

We took taxi to Chengdu Panda Breeding and Reasearch center. We were lucky to see several Giant Pandas in action. We saw some baby Pandas, yound Pandas playing around and older animals mostly just walking around. We also saw 'Red Panda' that looks very different from 'Giant Panda'.

In Chengdu we visited also beautiful Wenshu monastery, buddhist temple with many buildings made in traditional chinese style. Vegetarian restaurant was supposed to be really good but unfortunately it was closed when we visitied the place.

Yesterday was saturday and weather here in Chongqing was quite warm and sunny. We went first time with cable car over Yangtse river and scenery was really nice. We walked around in downtown, Jiefangbei. We found an area with older, lower houses with very poor living conditions for people living in the area just 'under' luxury, modern streets in city center. Along steep staircases lives people in quite unbelievable living conditions. Still we could meet many smiles, curiosity and kindness while going around like turists with our cameras.

Today in the evening I had good dinner at nearby restaurant with some nice people. We made also some plans for different kind of activities. On wednesday I have birthday and we decided that these nice people will come to visit me in the evening and bring some birthday cake with them. We were also talking about visit to Dazu stonecarvings, swimming, visiting hot springs, visiting salsa class in local dancing school, walking along trails on mountains, ... and other nice things one can experience here in Chongqing area.

Photos ... will be uploaded as soon as possible ...