I have been in Chongqing for 3 days so far. I do not know any Chinese. Interestingly, many of the signs for streets and even inside buildings like for toilet or exit, there is the English version. Actually many businesses often show both the Chinese characters and the English name at the same time. Very impressive, although most people do not appear to speak any English.
I am finding Chongqing to be pretty modern. There are lots of poor areas as well, in fact, the modern and old are often side by side on the same block, there is a mix mash as the city is still modernizing. The mix of modern and old is quite similar all over the city, and seems to get along just fine.
Every block has many tiny shops, plus many sidewalk ’shops’, such as selling various items on a blanket, shoe polishers, carriers (guys with bamboo sticks to carry stuff for someone), and many more. Lots of duplication too! The shops practically repeat every few blocks. The exact same ‘china mobile’ cell phone shop with its distinctive green/white banner can be found by walking in any direction within a few blocks. There is this outdoor cell phone bazaar area in the Nan Ping district, in a downtown area, and there are literally 100 people selling cellphones, each of them with their own table or suitcase of 10-40 cellphones each. All that duplication is probably because labour is so cheap. One grocery store I went to had a crazy amount of employees, there were groups of two-three them standing around each mini-section of the store.
The driving here is pretty interesting, they don’t really pay much attention to the lines on the ground, and will even cross the road against oncoming traffic to stop there, facing the wrong way. Pedestrians don’t have right of way, but will try to cross when they can. It is not unusual for some to be standing in the middle of the road waiting for the next break in traffic. Taking the the bus is very cheap, going from Dan Zi Shi (area where I’m staying) to Nan Ping district is 1 yuan and takes about 2 0 minutes. There is a person on the bus that comes to you and collects the fare, so it doesn’t matter what entrance you get on. Taking the taxi to Nan Ping district is about 16 yuan. I’ve been going to other places and averaging about 30 yuan or so. It’s relatively straightforward to get around, just have to say the area name or point at a piece of paper with the Chinese writing on it.
Food is quite cheap. There’s this awesome Chinese fast food chain called ‘Country Style Chicken (CSC)’ that gets very busy, and it is only 9.90 yuan for most of the meals. I haven’t tried hot pot yet, but Chongqing’s hot pot is supposedly famous.
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