Thursday, July 28, 2011

CHONGQING

BARS & NIGHTCLUBS
Cici Park – Kuixing Plaza, Linjiang Road (Yuzhong District); 011-86-23-6303-6940; football and trance music.
Cotton Club – Meili Building, Jiaochang Kou (Yuzhong District); 011-86-23-6381-0028; cottonclub.com.cn; slick bar with bands and lively clientele.
True Love Club – De Yi Shi Jie (Yuzhong District, in basement); 011-86-23-6379-7337; bizarrely entertaining; flirty, scantily clad bartenders serve good German beers.

HOTELS
Le Meridien Hotel – Jiangnan Avenue 10 (Nan’an District); 011-86-23-8638-8888; starwoodhotels.com/lemeridien.

RESTAURANTS
Jiayuan Restaurant – near Chuandaoguai; in modernized diaojiaolou whose upper floor leads to cliff-side bomb shelter used by Americans in WWII; shelter extends 200' straight into rock; specialty is dove.

SIGHTS & SITES
Baiheliang (White Crane Ridge) Underwater Museum – 185 Bingjiang Dadao, sec. 2 (Fuling District); 011-86-23-8568-8882; a6504790.oinsite.yh.mynet.cn; China’s 1st underwater museum; 40 ms below ground level, housing viewing cabin that enables visitors to see now-underwater, ancient White Crane Ridge inscriptions made on stone reefs, where, during Tang Dynasty, people would track Yangtze River water levels by whether inscriptions visible.
Chuandaoguai – among few old neighborhoods to survive Chongqing’s building boom; less than 1 mile long, less than 300' wide; atmosphere spans centuries; no cars; people move slowly, sitting in open-air mah-jongg parlors; chickens roam freely; try to note diaojiaolou (structure with supporting poles lashed together by bamboo thongs).
US-Chiang Kai-shek Criminal Acts Exhibition Hall & SACO Prison (Zhongmei Hezuosuo) – Gele Mountain (Sha Ping Ba District); SACO stands for “Sino-American Cooperation Organization” (collaboration between Chiang Kai-shek and US government, dedicated to Nationalist Party government agents’ supervision and training); jointly run by Americans and China, who built prisons where Communist Party sympathizers were imprisoned and tortured; prisons are considerable walk from exhibition hall; SACO museum is complex of 4 separate sites; best to hire car and guide; prisons actually not worth price, but Gele Mountain worth climb (peaceful and often misty, with several small pavilions, playground, and Martyrs’ monument at summit).

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