Chongqing Travel Notes | The fireworks of the mountain city are hidden in the hot pot and vegetable markets

If I could use two words to describe my relationship with the city of Chongqing, I think it would be fate.

During a layover in Chongqing in mid-April, the plane flew over the city, overlooking Hongya Cave and the brightly lit city.

At that time, I posted on WeChat and said: Sooner or later, I will come to Chongqing to visit! I didn’t expect that my dream would come true so soon.

In May, I learned that school would not start in sight. I had just returned to Shenyang after finishing my volunteer work. When I was taking online classes, I was told that school would not start before the end of June. My heart, which had just been silent, was about to start moving again.

Based on the funds in hand, I roughly finalized a few cities: Chongqing, Hangzhou, and Changsha. The moment Brother Lang replied to me, I had already bought a ticket and headed to the mountain city and foggy city.

What does Chongqing look like in your imagination? It's a magical 3D city where you can't find the road in the news, and if you drive at the wrong intersection, you might not be able to drive back in a day; it's also a foggy mountain city that's filled with fog, as if you're living in a fairyland; it's also full of hotpots, and you can eat spicy food. Sichuan and Chongqing regions.

I watched the movie "Passing Through Your World" written by Zhang Jiajia five or six times. Except for the filming locations in Daocheng and Aden, most of the city's exterior scenes were shot in Chongqing.

In the rain, Yaoji stood in front of the Liberation Monument holding a phone and listened to Chen Mo and Rong Rong arguing. Mao Shiba and Li Zhi chased and fought on the stairs of the mountain city. After Chen Mo lost the bet, he paraded in the street and shouted that I was a fool. Zhutou ran in Crying on the street and saying: "Yanzi, how can I live without you! Yanzi", the scene of Chen Mo and Yaoji taking the light rail through the building after get off work, every scene about Chongqing clearly comes to mind. middle.

The first thing I felt when I got off the plane in May was the heat. The temperature of more than 30 degrees made people feel inexplicably irritated.

On the way to the city center on the night bus, I looked at the green plants covering the entire wall, the winding viaducts and the light rail station located several stories high, and listened to the music coming from my headphones.

I thought to myself: Chongqing is a romantic city.

It was past twelve o'clock when we arrived in the city. I took my luggage with me and drove the navigation system to search for the location of Tingwu Youth Hostel. I couldn't find the way and ran up the high steps in vain. There were scattered vehicles under the dim lights. As of now, the only ones still open are the 20/40-hour convenience stores and the night market food stalls downstairs along the street.

Hidden on the third floor of the facade along the street is the location of the youth hostel. There is a white cloud hanging at the door, and the words Tingwu Youth Hostel are hidden under the clouds. When you open the door, you will see a bunch of green plants. The rest area, public activity area, guest room area, kitchen and bathroom shower area are all neatly divided. It is what I want a youth hostel to look like.

As soon as I entered the door, a group of people gathered around the table in the lobby, drinking, joking and playing games. I didn’t feel sleepy, so I took part in the game after washing up. I played until the early morning of the next day. After having breakfast, I went upstairs to sleep for a month. This is how my volunteer life began.

The daily work of volunteers is very easy: wake up in the morning to buy groceries and cook, clean up and wash the dishes after dinner, take online classes if there are any, and do online part-time jobs if there are part-time jobs. In the afternoon, they may help clean the room, and continue shopping in the evening. She cooks the food and takes on the heavy responsibility of walking the dog.

The two volunteers took turns cooking and walking the dog, which didn't feel like a burden, but the time in the store was divided into small, fragmented periods of time. It seemed like they did a lot, but they didn't seem to do anything at all.

During this month in Chongqing, there was even more of a fireworks atmosphere, as if I was really living in this city. I visited three or four nearby vegetable markets. Which vegetable market is bigger, which market is more convenient, and which market is more affordable to buy meat? This can be regarded as the biggest gain of this month.

Wandering through the streets and alleys of Chongqing, climbing layers of stairs and walking on the ground at different heights, the small shops hidden beside the stairs and the dense and dense trees all constitute the scenery of this city. .

The few times I went out to widen my range were when I was walking my dog. Each time I took different routes from the fixed mountain trails to discover a new world.

I always feel that wandering around in the city is quite fun. I don’t know when and where I will encounter some surprises. People talking and laughing on the roadside, local residents sitting around in front of the steps of the mountain city, busy people running around. Migrant workers and leisurely strolling tourists form a unique landscape on the mountain trail.

The biggest feeling in Chongqing is that although I am living here, I feel like I am living somewhere else.

You can walk on the mountain trail and look at the scattered tourists, or you can walk on the bridge and look at the high-rise buildings in front of you and feel the busy traffic around you. The hustle and bustle of the Jiefangbei business district can give you the most intuitive 3D experience. Hongya Cave, and the light rail passing by viaducts and residential buildings.

Chongqing can be anything you imagine.

There are not many permanent residents in the store. Brother Lang plays guitar in the sofa area late at night, the photographer Lao Tang who works at the front desk occasionally runs out to pick up private work, and Brother Feng is teased as a scumbag. He comes to help from time to time and makes crazy comments about me. Xiao Xu, Brother Wu who gives people a sense of oppression, Pumpkin who was added just when I was about to leave, the energetic Husky "Popsicle", and the cat "Eleven" who scratched me many times.

Bingluo is an energetic husky. At first, he and Brother Feng had to take turns walking him every day. The most troublesome time was when he met other dogs and they rushed up like crazy, but they couldn't stop them. That's the worst time to be hit by a popsicle.

Eleven is an arrogant little kitten. I think I am more happy to get along with cats, but I also suffer a lot in front of it. My hands are often scratched by Eleven into red stripes, and I even go to the hospital with them. When I take a shower in a pet store, the staff can't do anything about it.

Since Tingwu Youth Hostel is a youth hostel, even if the regular guests are busy looking for jobs or internships due to the epidemic, there are still some young people who can hang out with them. I caught up with them on the first night after arriving in Chongqing. We organized games while drinking and eating late night snacks, and also learned how to play the game, and exchanged jokes with Miss Yanzi that Northeasterners can catch, as well as Miss Orange from Sichuan with a gentle personality, Miss Miaomiao who looks exactly like Tong Liya, and their personalities Cheerful northeastern girl Duoduo.

I met Liu Qi, my brother who has been on WeChat for almost a year, in Chongqing. We also had hotpot together and walked around Chaotianmen. My favorite friend during the trip is that no matter when we met, we were sitting at the table. The moment I walked in, I felt like I had known old friends for many years. There was no awkwardness or silence, and getting along with each other was very natural.

Frankly speaking, it was not the right time to go to Chongqing. The temperature every day was above 30 degrees. For a Northeasterner like me who can sweat even when walking, I have to say that this was a kind of torture. The most impressive thing was We went to visit Hongya Cave with them, and we stupidly wore slippers that day. It turned out to be a stupid decision.

When you exceed the subway time limit and wear slippers to climb up and down the steps in Chongqing, you really don’t want to experience the sour feeling again. It’s enough to be stupid once in your life.

Life advice: Don’t try to wear slippers to climb stairs in Chongqing, try to change to light sports shoes, otherwise who will know who is tired.

Hot pot is a must-eat in Chongqing. A group of people sit around a table. In the middle is a hot pot in the shape of nine palaces. A layer of red oil floats on it. The sight of it makes people appetizing. Hidden in the steaming hot pot are the The real life atmosphere of Chongqing people.

I was actually quite at home during my one month in Chongqing. In addition to taking online classes and working part-time, the rest was busy with youth hostel affairs. During this time in Chongqing, I also thought a lot about travel.

If you don’t have enough savings, traveling will become very painful. When you are worried about making a living, do you really still have the energy to chase the poetry and distance in front of you?

The overwhelming propaganda on the Internet is telling you: The world is so big, you should go and see it. There are poems and distant places outside, but don’t forget the hardships in front of you. Even if you are traveling on a budget, you must pay for transportation, accommodation and tickets. .

I was very touched by what a friend posted on WeChat Moments: Apart from traveling, what else is left of you?

After thinking about it carefully, I found that there was nothing I could do.

What's the point of traveling thousands of miles if your soul is empty? To you, the scenery is just scenery. You cannot take it away or keep it. It can only exist in memories and images.

Use dreams as horses, don't ride more and more foolishly.

I want to read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles, meet more interesting people, and experience more interesting things. If I don’t have a good skin, I want to enrich my soul.

Think about a few decades later, lying on a bed or a wheelchair, unable to move, and about to leave this world.

Someone asked: Do you have any regrets?

"No more. I've lived, loved, experienced, and had a wonderful life."