The bIgger Beast...

Anyone who remembers how delighted we were to find ourselves in Lijiang might be surprised to learn how equally delighted we found ourselves to be leaving it. A bit like some giant sugary confection, the first bite is a heady rush but the taste soon cloys and before you know it, you've had enough. Its the full-on consumerism, I reckon, that does it - the way everything and everyone is either geared around buying or selling. The irony of walking down Wuyi Street just by our hotel, past placards reminding dutiful citizens of their Core Socialist Values, all the while being jostled by twenty-somethings hurtling headlong to the bars and fast-food joints of Lijiang's nightclub district needs no pointing out. Pretty yes, cute, undeniably. But two days - enough.
One thing we would be sorry to be saying goodbye to though were those clear blue skies. Where we were headed, there weren't going to be none of those. Another flight (and another delayed one - nothing too serious this time) takes us from Lijiang to the mega-city of Chongqing. Not really one of the usual foreign tourist map, this one - main reason for going was that it was home to Sian's very first language school posting when she first came to China nearly 40 years ago. Without wishing to labour the it-used-to-be-a-one-horse-hamlet-and-now-its bleeding-enormous schtick, Chongqing has changed a lot - the low-rise, shacks-on-stilts city of old swept away to make room for a new concrete and steel megopolis. We drive in from the airport along roads clogged by cars, many of them huge, gas-guzzling SUVs and people carriers, though most only seem to have one person being carried. Yes, there are the now familiar electric scooters but all the scooters in china can't fix this.
Chongqing takes a bit of acclimatizing to. I'd thought I had the measure of Chinese cities after Beijing and Chengdu, but this is something else. Bigger (thirty - thirty - million inhabitants. Beijing? Village. Chengdu? Hamlet) Chongqing sits as the biggest metropolitan area in all of China, faster, pushier, more in-your-face than anywhere else we've been. We step out from our hotel under a Manhattan skyline and a fug of Hong Kong heat, storefronts all around promising a shopping playground for the nouveau riche. Socialist core values, anyone?
Despite all the changes, Sian quickly discovers that the Chongqing Number One Foreign Language School has survived - still exising in its old location in the Shi Qiao Pu district of the city. The day after our arrival in Chongqing, we set off to find it. And find it we do, outwardly grown but still substantially the same place Sian remembers from her twenties. These days you have to go through security barriers to gain entry, and this is our first challenge. At first the welcome is at best guarded bemusement, but once past the checks and guided up to the Principals Office with the assistance of an english-speaking student, everything changes. Sian and her collection of nearly 40 year old photographs are greeted with amazement and delight by the Principal of the school and her staff. We are told that one of the Chinese teachers who was her contemporary at the time - although now retired - still lives on the school campus and within minutes a reunion has been arranged. Following that we're given a tour of the (considerably expanded) school by the Principal's deputy (including the very apartment where the young Ms Morgan was billeted- now - umm - the school museum), Sian is presented with a commemorative photo album chronicling the school's history and before we say our goodbyes we're being taken out to lunch by the faculty, after which we get walked back to the subway and waved on our way with tips for riding the most spectacular of the metro lines, an overground monorail trip with spectacular views across the river. You can't buy experiences like that on Trip Advisor.
That evening we take a night cruise on one of the many boats taking tourists up and down the Yangtze river. Walking from the bus down to the waterfront we were trying to imagine the waterfront on a balmy summer evening, and how pleasant that might be. Well, maybe one day - when the gas guzzlers are gone and the factories have stopped belching poison into the skies -  Chongqing will enjoy summers like that. Until then, all you can do is peer through the murk and think, we can't go on like this. For all that, as night falls and the boat slips away from its moorings the river comes to life - buildings on either side lighting up, preening and prancing and putting on a show for the watchers on the water. As a trip, its more like turning slowly in a big wide circle than going on a cruise, but undeniably its a sight to see. By the time we disembark things on the waterfront are hotting up, literally and metaphorically. Walking down to join the boat the crowds and been relatively sparse, but going back - as a number of boats disgorge passengers at more or less the same time - it was like walking back up Wembley Way after a sell-out FA Cup semi final. People, people, people. Everywhere...