Jonah 3:3 “Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.” (NIV)
Modes of transportation are what connect communities, people and culture. We took planes, floated in boats, and traveled in vans, walked miles, private cars, and now the Bullet Train from Chengdu to Chongqing. The scenery flies by us at 180 miles per hour (204 KM/hr) with almost no motion in the train.
Another guide meets us to take us from the train station to the Century Cruises boat dock in this enormous government controlled city of Chongqing. He hired a gentleman to carry our two suitcases over to the boat. He tied them on the end of a long pole, put them on his shoulders, and walked down hundreds of stairs precariously carrying our baggage.
We were amazed at the size of this city, the massive construction projects and the newness of architecture mixed with old China. I had never even heard of Chongqing before I arrived in the city of over 30 million people, which is larger than Beijing. The love of lights was on full display that night before we left the dock. There were lights on the skyscrapers, lights on the boats, changing colors and laser designs on the Arts and Cultural Center, all the bridges were lighted and the moving colorful lights were enchanting and memorable.
Chongqing sits between the Yangtze and Jialing rivers in southwestern China and was the beginning of the Yangtze River Cruise, which ends at the Three Gorges Dam. There were thousands of shipping containers being loaded on specialized crane elevators to be transported from the Yangtze River to the interior of China. Commerce in action.
What is your favorite big city? What do you think draws us to live with so many people?