I’m very happy I was travelling together with a friend who speaks Mandarin way better than me. While in big cities English and sign language is enough in most cases, having someone who speaks Mandarin really well helps a lot.To get to Chongqing, we took the bullet train (高铁) from Beijing. While still needing 12 hours, it’s quite impressive for 1500 km air line or roughly 1800 km on the rails with a lot of stops. The train tickets are not too expensive and can be easily booked online. However, one has to go in person to the train station, show the reference number and one’s passport to collect the tickets. To enter the train station, the ticket and passport are checked and the luggage is controlled as in airports.Getting further south and west, the air got remarkably hotter and more humid, leaving the dry Beijing behind.

Green landscape on the way



The easiest way to get from the train station into the city is to take the subway. All signs and announcements are both in Chinese and English, so it’s easy to follow. The subway tickets can be bought with cash, however mobile payment is widely used in China and in some places cash is not accepted anymore. To either use WeChat pay (微信支付) or AliPay (支付宝), a Chinese mobile phone number and bank account is needed, so it‘s only practical when you stay for a longer period in China.Chongqing is a municipality under the direct administration of the central government and has 30 million inhabitants, making it the largest in China. It has an interesting history and played a major role in the second Sino-Japanese war.We were lucky to arrive at the end of a heat wave, still it was around 25°C when we arrived in the evening. In the city centre, there is a street food street, especially deep fried mushrooms can be recommended. I don’t remember the exact street name, but it is close to the people’s liberation monument.

Street around the people’s liberation monument (人民解放纪念碑)



Stone dragon



Taxis



Up next: Fengdu (丰都) and Chongqing