Beibei

Monday, 4 December

I woke early in the morning at 8.30.  Xie Baoqiao came to talk to me.

At 9.00 I took the Legislative Yuan car with Tianjuan to leave Dushiqiao. The weather was fine, which is rare during winter in Chongqing. We were so lucky. The highway was not bad. The scenery en route was quite good. At ten we arrived at Beibei then we immediately went to visit Deng Hongye (鄧鴻業), Qi Zhihou (祁志厚), Ling Yuesan (凌越三). They had prepared lunch for us. The food made by their Sichuan cook tasted quite good. After lunch I toured around Beibei with Yuanru and Tianjuan. Beibei was a big area with the Three Gorges. After the Three Gorges Experimental areas and Lu Zuofu (盧作孚)[1] and others putting great efforts into construction, it had become a very mature and developed city. After the bombardment of Chongqing city last year, many people sought asylum here. Therefore there were many new buildings. The area around the new estate was particularly spectacular. The Sun Yat-sen Cultural Centre and the buildings of various banks were not inferior to the big buildings in Chongqing. There were bookstores, restaurants, hotels, and there were many modern ladies dressed splendidly everywhere. The Taotao restaurant, which was operated by Li Weikuan (李維寬) and bodyguards of Sun Fo, was quite prosperous. I wanted to make a reservation for a room there to have lunch but it was already full. I passed by the public stadium and went to Jiangbian. I bought rattan chairs, a bookshelf as well as a candle holder, and so on, at the rattan chair shop. There was a young woman in the shop that although she wore coarse clothing she had a wonderful figure. The women of Sichuan are so bosomy that those women around the downstream area of Changjiang could not compare with them.

At 2.45 we hired a small boat to travel upstream to Jialingjiang. As for the location of Beibei, it was originally at the end of Guanyinxia (one of the small Three Gorges), the river flow was turbulent. The small boat carried two people and it was almost unable to advance upstream. Luckily the water was shallow so we could leave the boat and push it but it was quite hard to do so. The river water was crystal-clear and the mountains on the banks of both sides were green and high. The poet, Bai Juyi, once said the water of the Sichuan River was clear and its mountains green. I thought he was right. At 3.30 we passed through Wentangxia. The rocks were irregular and ragged. The waterfall ran very quickly. We passed through Fudan farm and the Sichuan provincial government’s silkworm breeding farm. When we went to Jingangbei, we originally wanted to stop the boat and visit Peng Yueyu (彭岳漁), but we heard that Qinlu was quite far away from the place we stationed our boat, therefore we gave up the idea. We looked upwards and saw a Guanyin temple over the mountains of the left bank. It is the main branch of the Gelaohui.[2] The said society is quite powerful in this area. We passed it and we found the river was large and the water deep, which made our boats move smoother. At 4.00 we arrived at Wenquan. We left our boats and landed. We went upstairs step by step and when we looked down from there we took an overview of the Wenquanxia through which many ships and boats passed to and fro. The boatmen sang, which reminded us of the style of the Dalu or Volga Boatmen, which was naturally beautiful. Then we went to Shufanlou. Though the rooms were not spacious I loved it that we could view Jialing from atop. There were gardens upstairs. There were also bamboos and rocks outside, which were so nice. The rent was cheap too. They charged only three dollars per day. At 4.30 we went to the hot springs bathroom, named Ganchen. It was built in 1930. It was divided into a bathroom and swimming pool inside. There were only six or seven bathrooms. Since we arrived late all were already occupied. Therefore we bought tickets to go to the swimming pool. The indoor pool was called Qianqingbo, which was triangular in shape, and its water depth was around four feet. The outdoor pool was called Yongquanchi, which was rectangular. Its water depth was around four and half feet. The spring water was not that hot. (37°C) It contained sulphur, iron and lime. The changing room was crowded and dirty. But as I felt that I had arrived I changed my clothes there unwillingly. We went to the outdoor pool. Luckily as the sky was turning dark, all the people left. Only Tianjuan and I were in the outdoor pool. We swam for a while. As I had stopped swimming for several months and because of the fatigue of long travel, I felt tired after swimming for an hour. At 6.00 we went back to Shufanlou, then we went to the Jialing Canteen to have supper. It was because the hotels here were managed uniformly. In various hotels there were no kitchens (except the farm serving western food), and tourists had to come to this canteen. The river carp was quite delicious. Probably there were fewer fish upstream than downstream, but they tasted much better. After finishing the meal we returned to the hotel. As the sky was dark and the wind was chilling we could not take a walk outside and went to bed early. The bedding was not clean and there were many fleas. I could not sleep well because I was bitten by them.

[1] Luo Zuofu(1893-1952) was a successful Sichuan entrepreneur. He committed suicide in 1952.

[2] A secret Chinese society.