CHONGQING TO XI'AN

Siobhan has fallen asleep again while reading "The Man In The Iron Mask" and, thankfully, the young man in the opposite bunk rolled over on his side and stopped snoring loudly.

We are on the train from Chongqing to Xi'an in a second class sleeper car with 64 other passeengers in eleven open compartments of 6 bunks in tiers of three. There are fifteen cars on this train, including several other second class sleepers, one first class sleeper, a number of second class seated cars (where there is more than the 96 person capacity because aisle space is also sold), and a very nice dining car.

Periocically, uniformed railway workers pass through the car hawking drinks, snacks, fruit, meals in plastic trays, newspapers, and magazines. They have really loud voices and woke me up more than a few times. In between cars, Chinese men smoke cigarettes.

Unfortunately, this is the daytime milk run, stopping every half hour or so for twenty minutes at every station. Unlike the fast trains further east, the passage to Xi'an takes more than 12 hours. However, like the places further east, even the boonies here in west-central China are experiencing enormous growth. Every city and town sports at least a few construction cranes, new roads under construction, new bridge foundations standing upright in the air. In the annals of the Chinese people, this time will surely be remembered as THE BOOM or the Golden Age of the Construction Cranes. I hope it is not followed by THE BUST.

The surgeon who gave us the ride back in Wuhan put it this way, "The government has a balancing act to perform. The people need rapid economic development to satisfy their needs. Unfortunately, this rapid growth leads to serious environmental problems which are only partially addressed. It is a difficult balance." At the time, we were driving in his air-conditioned, luxury car in rush hour traffic with our windows closed to keep out the clouds of diesel exhaust. Smog covered the sky.

I forgot to mention the new tunnels through he mountains. We are in hilly country here and the Chinese are busily burrowing through them. I kid you not. The train passes through a tunnel every few minutes and it is often black in this car for two or three minutes at time as we pass through. I am currently typing away on one of the several small tables attached under the windows on the aisle on one side of the car, sitting temporarily in one of many jump seats. So I have a bird's eye view of everything.

The Chinese do not stare at us but they are watching. And they anticipate our needs. When I get up to use the washroom and can't find it, a nice man closes the door that is concealing the door to the loo. When I arrive in the car with my suitcase, two complete strangers grab it from me and throw it up onto the luggage rack. Then they show me to my seat, which probably isn't really mine but is on the bottom level and is probably preferred here. When Siobhan and I can't figure out how to ask for something from one of the vendors, Kenny, one of our fellow travellers, suddenly pipes up with the answer in English.

We boarded the train in Chongqing and bought one seat and one bunk and figured we'd alternate between the two. However, Siobhan found the second class seating claustrophobic and she's been sitting, sleeping, and reading in the bunk with me for almost ten hours now.

First class was sold out and so was the overnight train because trains are really popular in China.We were lucky to get a seat at all thanks to Jason, a bank worker at the China Agricultural Bank on our street in Chongqing. We went to that bank beside our #9 Hotel to change dollars into yuan. (I should be noted that we had been dropped right at the door of the hotel by a crew member from the Princess Jeannie after a two hour bus ride from the cruise dock down the river a bit. I don't think it was a big distance as the crow flies but we were caught in the mother of all trafffic jams in morning rush hour back in Chongqing.

Jason was either dispatched by the Agricultural Bank to take us to the nearby branch of the Bank of China to make the exchange or he took his lunch hour to do so. We follow him on foot through the teeming market district in the 31 C heat and humidity. Jason expains that thirty million people live in Chongqing and finds it difficult to grasp that that number almost equals the entire population of the country of Canada.

The sky is yellow. There is noise of hawkers in the market, traffic in the streets, and the rattle of pneumatic drills as buildings are coming down and others are going up.

After we successfully change dollars into Renminbi (the official name of the Chinese currency), Jason asks where we would like to go next. We say we need to buy train tickets.

"Please follow me," he suggests.

We are going uphill from the river into a posher district. Jason points out a sidewalk police post. This, he says, is unique to Chongqing in all of China: traffic police. I suddenly realize we are walking safely on the sidewalk without a single scooter, bicyle, motorcycle or other wheeled vehicle to threaten our lives. I like Chongqing already!

Suddenly, we are in a huge pedestrian mall surrounded by tall, interestingly-designed office buildings. If I tell you that Louis Vuitton is opening a big store on this roofless mall, it might give you an idea of the clientele in this district.

Jason is a graduate of a local college in finance and speaks English a bit haltingly. He took English at school and college but lacks the opportunity to practise it. His ambition in life is to rise up through the ranks at the bank, buy an apartment, find a wife, and have a family.

After we buy our train tickets, Jason asks where we woulld like to go next. We would like to visit the Ciqikou Ancient Town, a part of the old city that has been preserved instead of demolished. Jason obligingly leads us to the appropriate bus top. He takes his leave but not without our heartfelt thanks and a package of Canadian pencils with maple leaves on them.

The main street of Ciqikou has been restored and turned into a tourist trap full of souvenir shops where we actually find the best prices for some items we had looked for. So we buy. But, as soon as you turn off the main street into one of the alleyways, you step back to pre-World War 2 times. This is the Chungking of the old newsreels, Chiang Kai Sheks' headquaters for the Kuomintang during that war. Incidentally, Chongqing was one of the most heavily bombed cities of the world during that conflict.

This was the image I had in my mind of Chongqing (the proper name of the city) that didn't jibe at all with this modern metropolis that rivals Shanghai with its tall buidlings and imaginative architecture. This ancient town is a rabbit warren of houses built onto the slope of a hill between the river and main drag. The sidewalks and staircases rise at crazy angles every which way through tiny alleyways among the old hosues. It is a veritable labyrinth and we are soon hopelessly lost.

Old men are playing cards. Women are hanging out laundry, nasty sick-looking dogs threaten us. A man on a motorycle is putting on his helmet. We follow him out.

Back on the main drag we decide we have time to do one more tourist site. From the Lonely Planet, we pick the Gele Prison, which is a national historic site, where, with US help, Chiang Kai Shek's men imprisonned and tortured members of the Chinese Communist party, even though Chiang was in a formal anti-Japanese alliance with the CCP at the time.

But no bus will stop for us and three taxis in a row refuse our fare. In these instances, I have learned to take a step back, detach myself from the problem at hand, and enjoy being a spectator. No matter where you go or what you do as a newcomer to China, there is a new adventure to be experienced every time you step outside your door. So why not just sit back and watch the drama unfold?

Siobhan sagely suggests we opt for another tourist site, the Red Cliff Village Museum. Works like a charm. The very next cabbie happily accepts the fare. Anyway, I tell Siobhan, the Lonely Planet tourbook says the Gele prison is pretty grisly.

The cabbie drops us off into front of an immensely wide set of stairs.

"Look, it has lots of steps. It must be the place," observes Siobhan. Rule Number One in China: to impress, the visitors to a site of importance must climb a dizzying number of steps. This place certainly means to impress. It has a broad, gleaming marble staircase of about a hundred stairs, intersperced with gardens, all the way up. After the initial hundred steps, there is an additional two flights of stairs around a large landing. Above the landing are about another fifty steps up to a large pink marble building that just exudes the odour of triumphalism. Sweaty, we have rached the Red Cliff Village Museum.

The Red Cliff Village is the spot at which talks took place, under US auspices, between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party in 1945 concerning the future of China. There is a restored cottage here where Mao and Chou En Lai stayed during the negotiations, which led nowhere, only to a four-year civil war and the establishment of the People's Republic. The museum also celebrates the fact that, though the Kuomintang persecuted the communists during the war, the CCP managed to build a base for the eventual liberation here and for socialism anway.

Unfortunately, the exhibits have almost no English translations which is too bad because they are some spectacular, colourful, huge wall paintings in a style that reminds me a bit of Diego Rivera. There is newsreel footage of Mao's plane touching down on the runway in 1945 and lots of before-and-after photos of Chongqing then and now. And the museum is free!

Outside about 40 people are lined up for a formal group portrait of their visit in front of the museum holding a big red banner with Chinese characters. They drive away in tour buses.

We drive away in a cab at breakneck speed along the Chongqing equivalent of the Gardiner Expressway. There are no functioning seatbelts in most Chinese taxis. The skyline is magnificent. There are whole districts of high and low rise apartments done in the ame motif (pagoda), then another done in art deco, then another done in a different style, all along the Yangzi River. We are back to our hotel in minutes.

After a shower, it's time for a stroll down to Chaotienman Square at the very east end of the peninsula on which Chongqing sits in the river. Fortunately, construction has ceased for the day and we can walk down the hill in relative quiet under shade trees. There are little working class eateries all the way down where the locals are dining out on tables on the sidewalk. We check menus and pictures and continue down to the square.

The square is pleasantly laid out with tiles and gives a great view of the river and the skyline. Seniors are engaged in ballroom dancing in one corner of the square while vendors are flying kites, which they want to sell. Hawkers are selling food, maps, jewellery, windup helicopter toys, and many other items. Old women are out to shine men's shoes.

My sandals have seen better days so I agree for 10 yuan ($1.70 Cdn.) to a shine. Out of nowhere, a second woman appears to start shining my left sandal. They do a fiine job. However, they each want 10 quai. I give the ten yuan bill to the woman who approached me first and walk away.

A deal is a deal.

Oh, look, a group of white foreigners! They are walking in a tightly-knit bunch across the square in semi-formal attire. They take in the view and quickly leave. First, non-Chinese we have seen here.

We, too, leave the square and head back up our street. We pick a restaurant and have dinner and a beer out on the sidewalk under the trees. The food is good and the service marvellous. The owner (?) stands nearby making sure everything is just so.

Back up in our 18th floor room (first highrise and first hotel we've stayed in), dusk is falling and the light show begins. There is a builing across the river, one side of which is a TV screen. It is a low but large building. I would describe it to you but it doesn't fit any geometric shape I learned at school. The Chongqing dinner cruise ship is sailing merrily upstream in pulsating colours.

Chongqing is one of only three Chinese cities administered directly from Beijing. The other two are Hong Kong and Shanghai. I think that is because they expect great things to happen here. I don't think they will be disappointed.