The elusive stilted buildings

Yangtze River Cableway

We wanted to take the cable car across the Yangtze during our stay in Chongqing, to get a good overview of the city.  To avoid the crowd, we started early and was aided by the fact we were 5 mins away from the cable car station.

With a short queue, we were on the cable car a little after 0800 for the short ride  of less than 4 mins.  This cable car was a form of public transport before they had the metro network.  It now serves a touristic purpose only.

On the otherside of the river, we found shared a variety of noodles and dumplings for breakfast before exploring the area a little.

Yangtze River Cableway.

Lizipa Station

We then took the metro to Lizipa metro station, which has been made viral simply because the station was built as part of a building.

We took the metro to overshoot the building and then backtracked to actually arrive in the building.

We then went down to the road level to see the trains going through the building. There was a crowd there doing the same thing.

There was nothing that impressive about it but we had been duped by the hype and was adding to it.  If you can’t beat them, join them!

Lizipa Station

Ciqikou

We took a long metro ride to Ciqikou, a recreated ancient town that was built in the style of the old Chongqing buildings.  I was disappointed that it didn’t have enough of the stilted buildings with dark wood, that once covered the hillslopes.

It was stinking hot today, so after lunch, we took refuge in Starbucks briefly before taking another wander and heading back to the hotel.

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Hotpot and Shibati

In the evening, we simply couldn’t miss doing a Chongqing Hotpot for dinner.  We  couldn’t find the recommended eatery but found another one which was good too.

Our Chongqing Hotpot dinner.

We went for a non-spicy soup on one half of the pot and a medium for the other.  The latter was still spicy for our Malaysian palates.  Food cooked in it was edible but the soup wasn’t.  We could only drink from the non-spicy side.

It was a 15 min walk to another ancient town area called Shibati.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a short stretch of hilly road with Chongqing’s stilted architecture.  They have proved very elusive and this was a token towards my disappointment.

Shibati means 18 flights of steps, in this case from the water well at the bottom to the top of the stairs.  The city had porters for water and goods in its historic times.

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I had wanted to visit Chongqing since I saw photos (back in late 1980s) of the black hillside stilted buildings which covered the hills down to the riverside.  I’m nearly 40 years too late as Chongqing is all grown up into a modern city.

We returned in time to our accommodation to see the city lights in case they were turned off late at night, as we had seen from last night’s cruise.