A transfer city

Today we flew from Xian to Chongqing, a place I have never heard of and we all imagined that it would be quite a small place. How wrong could we be. As we flew in we couldn't help noticing the immense amount of high rises and the massive infrastructure. It turns out that Chongqing is in fact the largest municipality in China with 32 million inhabitants and the actual city itself houses 11 million inhabitants. It is the area that Chang Kai Shek retreated to when attacked by Mao Tse Tung before he decamped to Taiwan. It was the weapons manufacturing base for the whole of China. It's main claim to fame nowadays is the fact that apart from the flood risks on the Yangtziqq. It is the main reason why the Three Gorges Dam was built as such a large population consumes such an immense amount of power and electricity.

When we arrived it was simply sweltering and you could immediately understand how important air-conditioning is there. Before the dam the city used to get regular power blackouts in the summer. Large swathes of China are totally dependent on air-conditioning just for everyday living whilst we tend to regard it as a luxury.

We visited the Three Gorges Dam Museum there and a Migrants Community Centre which was a bit like a temple and quite fascinating. China has positive discrimination in favour of minority eqthnic communities and they'd were one of the few groups allowed to have more than one child under the One Child Policy in order to built up their presence in the nation. the migrants in this case were largely from the south of China. The One Child Policy has recently been relaxed because China is heading for a major imbalance in its population in which the elderly will predominate.

In the evening we boarded our luxury cruise liner for our three day sail down the Yangtzi. my blip shows Changqing by night shortly before we set sail.