Chongqing - Escape to country side

1st of May weekend we spent in search for traditional country side and with a desire to have a mini village hopping hike. And what a nice surprise we managed to make ourselves, heading out in the morning with a plan of getting into wild and lets see where the evening will find us. As the area is densely populated finding a place to stay shouldn't be a problem.
As self made guides at one moment the road turned into track, then track turned into no track, exactly what I had been looking for :) This is how it went:

Night stay and starting point of the hike - small river side village Zhongshan with one street and few flies 

Zhongshan's only street, so narrow that it was partially roofed.

Street life

Zhongshan is still a tourist destination, so during the day the small street turns into buy/sell trap. Some old notebooks being sold

View to the village from the river side

The biggest pleasure - playing cards. Card games are the absolute mandatory way of spending the day(s). 

Focus on the game

Restaurant and its today's menu opened directly to the street

Small track, later on getting smaller, until completely disappearing, for one moment only few houses on the other side of river were showing the presence of civilization. 

Football match in local style

Local farm house. Similar to Estonian rehetare?!

Team dining - Chongqing way

Last week I got the splash of this special warm team welcome in Chongqing - a true southern feeling team dinner - round table, toasts and a pre-warning that local team values drinking beer - something what in Shanghai or Beijing people really don't want to say out so directly.

15 people around the table, as an only foreigner, everybody had to have a one-to-one bottom up toast with me - minimum amount of toasts for me 14. Luckily Chinese beer is rather light. This kind of many-to-one toasting is actually a common way of testing guests or business partners.

Rather extravaganza food - dancing raw fish. 

Pure happiness.

Dinner getting louder, more toasts, shirts getting unbuttoned, one-on-one toasts with each other.


Last toast and off to KTV (karaoke)

Great Wall of China (4th edition)

This was the 4th time to get on the Great Wall in Beijing area.

1. In October 2009 it was done neatly by taking a tourist bus to one of the ticketed locations, we were given 3 hours on wall and bus back to Beijing 

2. Then in November 2010 Kristel and GT discovered a new way - wild hikes on not restored stretches of wall

3. The idea of wild hikes got me hooked, in April 2011 we went to the wild hike with Lauri. Luckily previous night it had been snowing (not often happening in Beijing!) so that all the mountains were in amazing white.

4. And almost exactly 1 year later in this March once again I was in Beijing. Once again it started to snow at night (first time this winter!) and in the morning everything was in amazing white. In the meeting point instructor informed the route have to be changed because of the heavy snow on road, but hell, both locations would be new experience anyway, so in my eyes both places were same good.

Starting point, small village around 1.5hours from central Beijing.

Mesmerizing views and quietness after about 1 hour of hard uphill.

Untouched stretches of the Wall. 

Usual hikers are foreign Beijingers, some of them joining in every week, thus the atmosphere is very relaxed and easygoing, much different from regular tourist trips to the 3 officially opened Wall visiting locations. Hikers webpage.

Back to Qingdao & Rizhao

Hotels to be seen in

In March I made it to Chongqing - new and exciting province to visit, almost in the middle of China. There was not that much time to see the city, besides work I had time for sleeping in hotel, evening walk and a short "drive-through visit" to Chongqing Garden EXPO on the way to airport.

Well this brings me to hotels in China, there is one interesting thing about them - the more luxurious the facility is, the bigger the window from bathroom to living room will be. Due to some mix-up in booking I finished up in one of these rooms with full window from bathroom to living room & from there a beautiful view to Chongqing foggy evening. Maybe it is the thing about rich and the beautiful - bathroom is the kingdom with its special throne to rule and be seen :)