China - Day 4

Day 4 was faily unevenful. We travelled via plane to Chongqing and settled into our new hotel, the Chongqing Marriott. This picture serves as a great study in the area.

Chongqing sits in the mountains at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers. The city, with a population of 30,000,000 is a primarily an agrucultural area. In the center of the photo you can see a typical farmers house, surrounded by their fields. Because the terrain is so rugged all of the farming is done manually. It's amazing to see how throughly every square inch of these hillsides are farmed.

The mist is another omni-present feature of Chongqing. Being near two rivers and nestled between mountains there isn't any place for the moist air to escape, so it hangs low and mixes with the smoke from the charcoal used for heating and cooking by many of the inhabitants.

Finally, in the distance over the hills you can see the cranes constructing high-rises. The construction everywhere and ongoing. In Beijing the old neighborhoods of one story houses are being torn down and being replaced with 10-20 story high-rises.

The most striking thing about China so far has been the population density. The area where we landed in Beijing was highly populated with 10-20 story high-rises all around. On our trip to Tiananmen Square we drove for 30 minutes and that level of density never changed. Even in the so called rural areas of China, like the area pictured above, none of the farmed areas appeared to be larger than an acre or two. Even the terms used for areas is on a different scale than we use in the states. Here for example is a suburb of Chongqing

And here is the "town" that Caden's orphanage is in.