It rained heavily during the night and this morning it is drizzling. The fine kind of drizzlethat doesn’t make you wet, just vaguely damp. We are leaving the hostel today and will be joining the cruise boat this evening. Although the boat doesn’t actually leave Chongqing until 10 am tomorrow morning. After checking out we continue our exploration of Ciqikou which we are discovering is much larger than just the few tourists streets. We stumble upon a large courtyard house dating back to the Ming Dynasty, originally home of the procurer of the Ming court and which for the princely sum of 4 Yuan each we are able to look around. Further on and after a steep climb we come across an open air theatre. It is 2 Yuan to look round. For lunch we decided to try the local speciality – hot pot – and what an experience that turns out to be. Read on below to find out more! We wile away the afternoon around the old town ending up in a tea house listening to traditional Chinese music. Then back to the hostel for some internet therapy before our 6pm transfer to the cruise boat.
Once off the beaten track it becomes apparent that large parts of Ciqikou particularly further up the hillside have been built much more recently and although these newer buildings blend in quite well, they are several stories taller than the older parts and the white plaster and timber frame style which characterises this village has been painted onto the exteriors. There are no roads in the village (so no cars, a blessed relief from honking horns) instead narrow passages and steeps stairways snake up the hillside from the main street. Here, as in the Hutongs in Beijing, many (possibly most) houses don’t have sanitation and rely on public toilets. The streets are filthy, not with rubbish (the many street sweepers keep the main streets litter-free) but black with dirt.
The hostel advertises a local production of Si Chuan (Szechuan) opera and face-changing on Saturday afternoons and we have been given directions to the venue. We set off in the morning with the intention of finding the venue ahead of the 2.30pm performance, but can’t locate it. We do find, quite by accident, an outside theatre on the hillside where we pay 2 Yuan each to explore what we at first think is another temple. Could this be the venue we’ve been looking for? It seems unlikely as there is no evidence of an impending performance..
Back at the hotel we can’t get any clarification on whether the theatre we have just visited might the the venue for the opera – the staffs’ English is just not good enough unfortunately. However, they do recommend a hotpot restaurant on the main road. We know next to nothing about ‘hotpot’ other than it’s a local speciality which involves cooking the ingredients at the table. So when we walk into the restaurant we have no idea what the expect. The staff can’t speak English but they all gather round us and confusion reigns. There are fresh fish in tanks as well as pre-prepared raw fish laid out – but which do we choose from? I let Andy make a selection and we hope for the best. I think the staff must have taken pity on us because one of them spends the whole meal supervising the cooking and shows us what to eat when. The fish is cooked in what turns out to be a meat broth (I turn a blind eye to this) and then dipped in soy sauce accompanied by a bowl of the broth, which the waitress keeps topped up. Andy has chosen mussels, squid and what he thinks is eel, plus we are brought some unidentifiable white fish. All goes well, until the ‘eel’ is cooked. It is only when Andy pulls out a clawed foot and on closer inspection of the head, we realise that in fact we are eating terrapin! Terrapin is mostly shell with very little meat (difficult to confuse with eel in retrospect). From this point on not much more of of the meal gets eaten! The meal costs £25 which is a small fortune here, where you can eat for about £2 a head.