Chongqing's Eighteen Staircases Area

Got a call from Eric about an hour after we got back from Dazu City. Seems Lillian wanted him to take care of us since she had to return to Chengdu for business. No problem.

Eric, a classmate of Lillian

We met Eric at around 0900 at the Victory Monument on Friday and he took us on the Light Rail to a shopping area for breakfast and for some shopping. The interesting part about this trip was the underground shopping areas. All the town centers have huge areas underground that were once bomb shelters from the Japanese intensive bombings during World War II. Chongqing, because it had become the headquarters for Chiang Kai Shek's government was heavily bombed and the civilians paid a heavy toll in deaths and injury. All those old bomb shelters are now huge underground malls.

One can kind of get a feeling that this was once a bomb shelter

Cannot tell what it was when one gets inside as there are hundreds of different shops

After the shopping excursion, I asked Eric to take us to the Eighteen Steps Tea House which I had read about. No problem. It is near the hotel we stayed in the first night. The only problem was that Eric did not understand that I was interested in the tea house and not the eighteen staircases area. We walked down the old eighteen staircases and it was interesting but very, very old. No ancient Chinese buildings, just old. No wonder it is going to be torn down and replaced. It was a pretty miserable area but interesting.

Nothing special, just old and falling down

They use glass bottles in Bangkok to do the same thing. This is really strange looking

It is a wonder that these building are still standing. They are that bad

This is the bottom or eighteenth staircase. The place was called Eighteen Staircases because ..... Yep, there are eighteen set of stairs.