You are the mobile scenery

Thirty-two million people; The population of Canada in one city. Here is what a tourist card found in the lobby of the Hilton Chongjing said about this Chinese city.

Mountain city Chongqing is well-know the world, the two jiangs blends together, four shore place scenery is this city raises global the first name card, lets the outside intuitively, three-dimensional, dynamic, omni-directional, the short distance, the understanding know Chongqing, demonstrated Chongjing’s best window – the two jiangs swims. Chongqing is a not night of mountain city. Under the night light climbs mountains in the mountain enhances once another’s beauty, the overlapping, produces an inverted image in Yangtze River and Jialing River, if the dream resembles imaginary. Wanders about in the grotesque and gaudy lamp sea, you are the mobile scenery.

My computer’s spell checker is having a melt down. I have no idea what these words mean but it kind of reads like song lyrics. I like the last few lines and I can imagine Bono singing them with earnest.

If the dream resembles imaginary
Wanders about in the grotesque and gaudy lamp sea
you are the mobile scenery
you are the mobile scenery
baby, you are the mobile scenery
and that’s alright
and that’s alright
yeah, yeah

Did somebody change the channel?

Chongjing with a third of a billion people isn't even the capital of the Szechuan province but it is the home of the fiery hot pot. They use and amazing dried pepper that looks like kind of like a cross between a caraway seed and a pepper corn. It is super hot. It makes your tongue sting creating a fizzy sensation when you eat that is wonderful. I went to a hot pot restaurant last night below a super trendy shopping mall, the name of the restaurant translates into, “Grandma’s Bridge”. Nobody spoke English there at all and they had no menu so it took some various hand gestures, smiles and lots of patience but after about forty-five minutes I was diving in. I shied away from the beef tripe and the duck intestines and ate mostly things that I could recognize or at least categorize somewhat. There are actually two hot pots, one has a chicken bone broth which is quite mild and the other is a red beef bone broth with a ton of those hot peppers along with tons of garlic, onions and huge chunks of ginger. Heaven. All of the food arrives raw and thinly sliced on plates and you cook it yourself in the boiling soup at your own table. I made sure I had a big beer to protect me and it was a great treat.

The previous night I had an authentic Sichuan dinner with my contacts in the hotel’s fancy Chinese restaurant. It was interesting and for the first time I tried pickled jellyfish which was crunchy and refreshing. I explained that I love spicy food and Winston had a mischievous look on his face. He promised he would bring me something to try.

He carried around this little plastic bag of goodies while we are shooting. After we were done he gave the bag to me with a smile. He could not speak English but I was told that the bag contained spicy pickled duck neck. It also contained lotus flower root and chicken feet. I tried them all. The lotus flower root was crunch and sweet and looked weirder than it tasted. The spicy duck neck was actually very good but the smell was quite bad. The chicken feet had a good taste but they were too revolting to look at and think about.

Yesterday I rode around in a beat up taxi in a congested city. I ended up in a bar called the Cotton Club but decided not to drink there because it was just a noisy dark box with flashing lights. Today I swam up to the pool bar and had a cocktail at sunset. I love the contrasts of this job. It is unbelievable how much difference a day can make.

I am in a Hilton resort in Sanya, China. It is located on an island on the South China sea directly across from Vietnam. It is at the same latitude as Hawaii. It feels like a Chinese version of Maui. I swam in the sea today and it reminded me of the Caribbean. The drive in reminded me of parts of Indonesia and Jamaica. The palm trees have more of a spiny fern-like look to them than the ones in Hawaii.

A tropical paradise in China? I’m surprised too.