Photos from the Road: Jishou to Chongqing

Two weeks ago, I set out from Jishou, Hunan, China, where I spent much of the last year and a half. I won’t be back for a while. Some of the friends I made there plan to visit me in 5 or 10 years, and I hope they’ll bring some Tujia Jiangbing:

IMAG0288[1] — Xiangxi prefecture, where Jishou is located, has some seriously special food. My favorite snack from day two in the city was this kind of pancake, made in meter-wide presses and then stacked and chopped into squares. I already miss it.

Add in a few wrong turns and diversions, and my route was the shortest one on the map above. East to West.

This first section of road, between Jishou and the inland megacity of Chongqing, passed through some serious hill country. Before modern road-building technology made big bridges and tunnels possible, the area was one of the most remote in mainland China.

Despite the beauty, building highways through this country isn’t easy. Pictured is a bridge connecting two through-the-mountain tunnels. The succession of tunnels I’ve passed through over the past two weeks has made me feel distinctly vulnerable.

The things you see along the long slow road: A miniature Moon Mountain, with a path leading from the village above to a farm in the valley below.

The view through the arch, from the other side: A farmhouse through winter trees.

Like most mountainous areas in China, the area is lousy with hydropower. For those of you who have read *River Town (2006)*, the city of Fuling lies where the river pictured above meets the Yangtze–I passed through it the same day this was taken. At the end of that book, the author, Peter Hessler, talks about the impending completion of the Three Gorges Dam. At the time China’s massive expansion of hydropower was all over the news, but today China has few areas left where it can build out new hydro infrastructure without facing pushback from local communities or neighboring countries.

IMAG0296[1] — When the road wasn’t passing through tunnels, there were often sheer cliff faces on either side.

IMAG0293[2] — This girl is the daughter of the owners of one of the restaurants I visited. She started chatting with me about my home and my family. There was something about me drinking tea that she found pretty funny, and she started taking photos of me. And then she turned into a little paparazza. When I finished my fried rice, we went through all 117 (I did the math) photos that she had taken during the meal.

Outside my new pengyou’s (friend’s) restaurant, a lantern lit by compact fluorescents.

Here’s one way you know it’s spring in China: The bright yellow of the rapeseed flowers cover the countryside (did you know that “canola” didn’t exist until the 1970s? The name was a rebranding effort by Canadian plant oil producers who wanted to avoid the bad connotations of the plant’s name)

Urumqi Weather Underground — I just hope the weather in Xinjiang gets a tad warmer by the time I get there. Spring comes fast in the desert, but so far it seems like northern China isn’t on board with the rest of the world’s crazy above average temperatures.

For today, the peach and plum blossoms are out in the ancient river town of Gongtan. Maybe the spring will follow me north.

3 thoughts on “Photos from the Road: Jishou to Chongqing”

Laurie Powell says:

March 22, 2016 at 10:35 pm

Hi Forrest,
Loved your recent most. I lived in Chengdu, Sichuan back in the 80s, so your photos bring back a lot of memories. And they connect with my/our present, e.g., compact fluorescents lighting up a Chinese lantern 🙂
On a related note, I’m a volunteer with 350 Eugene. We met briefly at the Naomi Klein film screening last fall. I just recently added your blog to our website on our “Climate Stories” page (http://world.350.org/eugene/) Hope this spreads the word a bit more.

Safe journey & Zai jian!

laurie

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1. fqwatkins says:
  
  March 22, 2016 at 11:09 pm
  
  Thanks for the comment and the sharing! Did you travel into the mountains West of Chengdu while you were there? I traveled through there last fall on my way north from Yunnan, and was blown away by the landscape.
  
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