It used to be that when a person was visiting China for the first time, the natural choice was Beijing. No better way to learn about a country than a visit to its capital, amirite? Having had their fill of Peking duck and climbed the Great Wall of China, the next places they would likely look at are those on the east coast - Shanghai, Nanjing, perhaps Harbin.

In recent times though, the southwestern parts of China have gotten much coverage on social media. Chongqing, the country’s largest city by municipal boundary, has had its juxtaposition of modern skyscrapers and stilt-buildings dating back to the ancient Ba state go viral online.

A pretty good summary of Chongqing that briefly touches on the virality of it from a YouTuber I discovered recently.

Why is that? I took a trip with my family towards the end of 2024 to find out.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

It happened that my father had been wanting to revisit Yunnan province after his first visit about 30 years ago with his family (probably before he married my mother), but over the years he had to hold back as the rest of our family opted for more “exciting” destinations (the usual suspects: Japan, Scandinavia, etc.). When we were discussing our next destination sometime in 2024, Yunnan came up again. This time however, we were more interested, having last been to China in 2012 (to my paternal grandfather’s birthplace, Hainan).

The “hyper-modern” architecture of modern Chinese cities like Chongqing was what compelled my brother and I to agree to the trip. With some persuasion, Mum relented (she didn’t like visiting China), and so it was settled.

FIRST STOP: HONG KONG

Day 1: We couldn’t get a morning flight to Hong Kong, one of our family’s favourite overseas spots, so we arrived in the evening. Our last visit was in 2018, so seeing once-familiar sights slowly undergoing China-fication (e.g. cha chaan tengs [Hong Kong-style diners] becoming Sichuan restaurants) was somewhat depressing.

Day 2: Our one full day in Hong Kong. Mum was disappointed during the planning stage of the trip as a Cantonese speaker, but the rest of us felt it was enough time to eat the things we missed and buy the things we wanted.

This was when I realised my parents were getting old - though they had travelled the world via cruise the year before, they got tired enough to need an afternoon nap. Nevertheless, I did what I could to savour being in one of my favourite cities in the world.

Having a proper camera now in the Sony ZV-E10, I realised how photogenic (or videogenic in my case) Hong Kong was. Something about sunlight falling on things hits different.

Day 3: After a quick breakfast at the Australian Dairy, we headed to the Hong Kong Kowloon West Station for our train to our next stop, Chongqing.

Given that this was a 16-day trip, I decided to cut what could possibly have become the longest single MCF blog post into parts dedicated to each area. Stay tuned!

~ Wei Feng

Images: Myself