Chongqing snacks

I met my adoptive aunt and uncle the next morning for brunch. Because of all the levels in the shopping mall-karaoke parlor-park-apartment complex, it took us a while to find each other. We finally did, though, in front of an H&M buried in a hillside.

We walked from the H&M down the hill to a food court whose stalls were famous for selling authentic Chongqing snacks.

Left: Grilled skewered wood ear mushroom, potatoes, quail eggs, broccoli, shiitake mushrooms, tofu skin, and something slimy made from beans. Right: Sour-and-spicy yam noodles.

Steamed pork dumplings.

Marinated dry tofu. The shop that sold this was actually more famous for its marinated duck heads.

Starch noodles in spicy sauce

To be continued...

Chongqing

Chongqing, also known as the Mountain City, is a metropolis built around the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze rivers in west-central China. It was part of Sichuan until 1997, when the government split it off into a separate province due to its enormous population. 

Last Friday at 7:45am I took the bullet train from Chengdu. I took turns dozing and watching the terraced hillsides go by in a blur, the only sound in the train an advertisement for dried lean beef strips, playing on repeat. The train ride used to take 12 hours, but now the high speed rail gets there in two hours. 

In front of the train station there was a bus to the monorail station. The monorail took me to a subway. From the subway station I took an escalator up and found myself in a shopping mall, still three floors below ground. I went up to the ground level, went outside, and reviewed the directions to the hostel on my phone.

Go to the third floor of the shopping mall and exit the door near the wedding banquet hall, said the directions.

I went back inside, up three more flights of escalator, and found the wedding banquet hall. Next to it there was another door that led to a street (the kind you can walk on, etc.).

Take a left, go into the Taiwanese karaoke parlor, and take the elevator to the eighth floor, read the next step in the directions.

I walked through the sparkly gold lobby and into a glass elevator. We were already on the third floor. The fourth through seventh floors looked like typical apartment building hallways, but on the eighth floor the door opened onto a park. 

Go through the park and into the first building on the right, said the instructions. 

The hostel was an apartment on the 35th floor to which some extra bunk beds had been added. I had one roommate, a Singaporean named Sherman, who had bleached hair and all white clothes and wore toe socks and toe shoes. He said he used to be a world music composer, but now he was writing a novel instead.

"Small noodles" (小麵) with a fried egg, a common Chongqing street snack. The sauce has the "málà" spicy-numbing flavor combination characteristic of Sichuanese hot pot. 

Savory tofu pudding (豆花). You take a piece and dip it in the spicy garlic-sesame sauce and then eat it.

Downtown Chongqing at night. The small tower in the middle with the dome was the tallest building in Chongqing when it was built; now it's possibly the shortest.

 

This and below: The Hongyadong (洪崖洞, literally "Flood Cliff Cave"), a big old complex on the banks of the Jialing river.

Where the Jialing river meets the Yangtze, seen from outside the Hongyadong.

Sauces for sale in the Hongyadong.

In my apartment at 6:02 I hear an ice cream truck version of Für Elise start outside. I grab the blue plastic bag from the trash can, tie it up, kick on my flip-flops, and run downstairs. Outside, people carrying bags of the same color and widely varying sizes are converging from all directions on the truck, which is parked down the street. Actually, there are two trucks -- a big garbage truck and a smaller pickup behind it. We throw our blue bags into the big one and watch them get compressed by the metal door. There are big plastic tubs set behind it where people dump their compost and restaurant workers take turns pouring a day's worth of leftovers. The compost truck takes my empty water and yogurt bottles. I notice some people putting their bottles in a separate heap nearby, which is being watched over by an old woman. She tells me she's a private recycling enterprise. Noticing that some people put their recycling in the pickup while others choose her pile, I ask her what the practical difference is. She shrugs.