The weather remained obstinately hot, muggy, overcast, humid and generally unpleasant. We were herded off the boat along a floating causeway. Then up some steps and loaded into small, electric buses that whisked us off to Xianguanshan. This is billed as an Ancient Folk Culture Park near Fengdu, a county in Chongqing. The park reproduces historic ancient residential buildings, courtyards, temples, wood carvings and city gates in the Fengdu region. I am not quite sure whether these have been built in the style of the old building or if they were rescued from the gorges before they were flooded. Whatever, they are now part of a popular tourist stop by the Yangtze.
In many ways, it was the usual thing. Uncomfortably sweaty and packed in with hundreds of tourists. Not really my ideal way to spend a morning. Indeed, I had started to wonder just what I was doing there. The buildings were moderately interesting but it felt a bit like wandering around a museum without any exhibits. We are not too keen on museums at the best of times.
The one redeeming feature was the garden. Very few people lingered here. They were too busy getting to the next old house. There was lush vegetation and even some wildlife. We have seen precious little wildlife in China. I suspect they have eaten it all. After a few moments waiting quietly under a tree with dense foliage, it was delightful to spot a couple of birds. A Collared Finchbill and a Light-vented Bulbul is all it took to make me happy. I may be turning into a birder. There was also an interesting and magnificently coloured butterfly. Google tells me it is a Chinese peacock swallowtail.
Back to the boat and the last bit of cruising. In the afternoon, the sun finally made an appearance. It was a bit shy and did nothing to dispel the uncomfortable humidity. However, it did improve the light for photography. Sitting on the front deck with my telephoto lens, I was content to watch the world of the banks of the Yangtze River drift by.
On the hills overlooking the river, I spotted many things that I would have like to have asked our guide about. He was nowhere around. Whenever he was not actively guiding us, he tended to slope off. I often caught sight of him smoking cigarettes and looking a bit miserable. Well, I thought he looked rather depressed, he was maybe just being oriental and inscrutable. There was a massive golden statue of a woman looking away from us. There was a tall, white pagoda catching the sun. There was a cenotaph looking strangely Egyptian. All these things remain a mystery to me. More comprehensible were the farming activities. Rice fields where it was flat enough. Cows in the water. There was the occasional person fishing on the banks and there were several boat yards. They looked a little ramshackle in some ways but they were obviously turning out some large working ships and appeared to be making a good job of it.
We arrived at Chongqing. This place is massive. A great, sprawling municipality the size of Austria but with three times the population. At 30 million residents, including rural areas. the municipality of Chongqing is the largest city proper in the world by population. The United Nations uses three definitions for what constitutes a city. A city proper is the geographical area contained within city limits. However you want to think about this, it is an awful lot of people and as far as I can work out, everyone lives in apartment blocks. There are thousands, possibly millions of these. Everywhere. All the places we have travelled there are apartment blocks. All remarkably similar. Some in great estates of identical towers. There are a few other types of accommodation but, anecdotally, it seems to me that just about everybody lives in the same size and type of apartment.
90% of homes are owned by their residents. Home ownership is remarkably high but at the same time urban land ownership is exclusive to the state. In a typical apartment block, the individual units can be bought and sold however the land on which the block is built is leased from the state on a renewable, fixed term contract.
This was the end of our cruise. We had another night on board and then in the morning we would head to Guilin.