Chinese like to place English characters much like they place their own characters.  I believe this picture might describe it best:

(I dare you to understand it on the first pass)

HAR BIN SNO WAN DIC EBIG WO RLD

I’ve also seen:

Fire Hyd Rant
Fire Hose Rant

Also, in an airport I saw the curious notice:

Do Not Go Into The Elevator
Without An Elevator Cryptogram Card
Other Wise You Will Be Closed In The Elevator

When Driving down the highway in Chongqing I found these polite signs:

Don’t Driving When Tired

Overspeeding Prohibition!

Last week I bought a plane ticket to the cheapest place that was reasonably far away from Shanghai that I had not yet visited, and that had a temperature above freezing; Chongqing.  I flew into Chongqing with a backpack with 1 day’s extra clothes, a pen, a notebook, a toothbrush, a raincoat, a physics book, my passport, some cash, and a camera.  I found a hostel that was quite kind, full of fun people, who put me up for $12 for 3 nights - meals included if I ate with the proprietors, and all the beer I could drink each night if I played along with the Chinese drinking games.

I wandered the biggest unknown city in the world with a friend I met from Wuhan, a neighboring (mega-)city.  We ate the spiciest food I’ve ever eaten (the city used to be in the famed Sichuan province - famed for spicy foods and pretty women).  We wandered up the old streets, the famous streets, and the newly built streets.  Depending on how you count, Chongqing is the fastest growing city in the world and even the largest city in the world if you have a funny way of counting or want to write an interesting documentary…  It is powered by the three gorges dam nearby.  Many of the nearly-half a million new residents a year are from the regions along the Yangtze River who have been displaced by the massive engineering project. The city is full of peasants who walk around the streets with a rope attached to a long bamboo rod - their safety harness - signaling a willing intent to work on one of the hundreds of multi-million dollar construction projects underway in the city.  After a few days I wanted to head down the Yangtze river to see the dam, and from there head further south towards China’s southern coast.

I asked the hostel to buy a ticket on a boat for me to head down the river.  I speak enough Chinese to arrange such things generally, but when the details come, I just say ‘sure!’ without really understanding the times or details, and just hop in the next seat, ask for the next bus, or when the next train leaves…

So I blindly paid a single fare for one boat trip, and then:

• 5:32am Woke to catch a car they arranged for me with their friends
• 6:00 - 6:50am drive from hostel across town to the docks
• 7:20 - 11:45am ride in a minibus with some locals from Chongqing down the river to a nearby city
• 12:00 - 5:30pm speed down the river on a hydrofoil
• 5:45 - 7:00pm take a big bus past the dam from the very top, through the mountain tunnel to the nearby Yichang city bus station
• 7:30 - 11:00pm take a long-distance bus from the city of Yichang to Wuhan
• 11:05 - 11:30pm take a friendly taxi from downtown to the train station: (“can you please say again the difference between ‘apple’ and ‘airport’?  They sound the same!”)
• 12:30am - 1:30pm take a train (hard seat!  No beds left!) from Wuhan to Guilin
• 2:30pm - 4:00pm take bus from Guilin to Yangshuo

So, in a crazy, perfectly timed 34 hour trip (with about 3 hours sleep intermittently on the train…) I traverse some of the most beautiful parts of China along with an array of really interesting locals.  I took about every form of transportation I could think of…

Then I spent 3 days in Yangshuo enjoying the river, the scenery, eating good food, meeting more friends and taking some pictures.

PICTURES!

(the haircut cost 64¢ so… again, I guess you get what you pay for…)