大坪七牌坊 Da Ping's Seven Tablets Lane

(The official plaque saying this is a cultural landmark and that Seven Tablets Lane is to be protected. Placed in the year 2002.)

(七牌坊 Qi Pai Fang, Chee Pai [say: pie] Fahng.)

(The characters say something about a river. But even my Chinese friends couldn't really tell me why these were placed here.)

(Seven Tablets Lane, or Qi Pai Fang [Chee Pai Fahng] was almost destroyed in the demolishing of old government block housing.)

(James and I walked over those boards to avoid destroying our feet on the rubble. But...when you walk over the boards all the rats underneath begin to protest. When leaving the site I preferred the other route.)

(Construction workers milling about. That block of housing is probably demolished now.)

(James Spencer-Owen. I am not sure how willing he was to go with me on this adventure. But I　dragged him along. These tablets were pretty huge. The tablet on the far right says something about a river.)

(Just so you get an idea of how big these tablets are. Nowadays [May] I wouldn't wear that much clothing. I think James and I went to explore this in February...when it was still COLD!)

(We kept commenting on how the surrounding area looks like a bomb had been dropped.)

(Maybe this area will have towering apartments like that.)

(This is the market we passed through to get to 七牌坊 Qi Pai Fang.)

(Selling all kinds of pots and containers.)

(That big red character on those huge urns means alcohol. 酒 jiu3)

(Shelling peas.)

(More vege.)

(On the way home this little girl was staring at us. So I decided to take her picture. She is sitting atop the fire extinguisher in a public bus.)

七牌坊 Qi Pai Fang was originally meant to be a mild adventure. I had bought a small Chinese guidebook to Chongqing's historic and "touristic" sights. While I was flipping through it I found several pictures of a pleasantly shaded street lined by huge stone tablets. The neighborhood is relatively old looking but at the same time very Chongqingesque. Cobble stone alley ways, steps galore, people hanging laundry out their windows, some even placing bedding on the tablets.

I dragged James along with me. When we got off the bus we found the nearest magazine/drink stand to ask for directions to the lane. Fortunately our bus had stopped almost exactly perpendicular to the small street leading to the lane. However simple this may sound now, we didn't know this at the time. I asked the man watching over the cigarette-selling part of the magazine stand. His wife (I am assuming) sat in the far corner of the booth knitting.

"Excuse me, where is Qi Pai Fang?"

"Eh? You want to go to Qi Pai Fang?"

"Yes."

"[Insert directions here]."

"Well you'd better hurry. They want to demolish it soon. Oh, actually it's been demolished."

The wife sitting in the corner who had been quietly observing, set her knitting on her lap and piped up.

"It hasn't been demolished yet. They wanted to though. But the people of the neighborhood protested and complained. So now they will keep it safe."

"Who is they?" I asked.

"The construction company." the couple said, they looked at me as if I had just asked a really stupid question. Maybe I had.

James and I thanked them and were on our way. Even though those two had said the lane hadn't been demolished yet we hurried along the street leading to our destination. This street was packed with stalls of lettuce, alcohol, fruit, and various cooking items. The little corner of Chongqing we were in was not the most well-off area to be sure. Most of the people gawked at us as we went on our way.

The next part came as a shock. Once we turned a corner we saw that a whole chunk of the neighborhood had been blown away. It looked like a bomb had been dropped on all the government housing that had once occupied this now quiet space. From a small distance we could still see the stones, which looked intact. What a relief! For a split-second I thought that the whole adventure would have been ruined. The only thing in the way now was a strip of yellow CAUTION tape and a few workers smoking cigarettes. I tried crossing the line and then a worker said:

"You are not permitted. It is unsafe."

"Oh, but I just want to take some pictures. Is that alright?"

"Ok, but be careful. Walk along here..." he pointed to some boards.

The only reason he let us pass I think was because I spoke Chinese with him. He may not have expected me to be able to answer him back at all, let alone understand what he had said in the first place. It feels strange to think about all the things I would not have been able to do in China if I could not speak Chinese.

As James and I walked over the boards we heard the protests of various rodents: RATS! Quickly we hurried off. I turned only to see a few scurry out from under the boards, turn around, then scurry back under again. The rats were not very big but they looked filthy.

The stones were large sturdy slabs. They were much much taller than me. Possibly three times taller than me. But then again some of their bases were covered in construction debris. On each stone were carved large characters. I recognized a few but when I put them together I did not get the meaning. I do know now, that one slab says "Fierce Loyalty," or "Strong Virginity," depending on how you'd like to translate it. The other slab says the name of a Festival or a shrine (that is located in Taiwan). That is if you read the characters vertically. If you read them from right to left (from one slab to another) it just means "Virginity" while the bottom would read "Strong Filial Piety." Interesting, huh? (Mind you I had to find out all of this by myself, my Chinese friends weren't much of a help).

Next James and I looked around at the barren landscape. It was an oasis of empty space surrounded by overcrowded apartment blocks (be they government-built or already-looking-dirty newly built). The sun was high. I started to sweat. We took pictures, looked around at the tablets for a while. Wondering out loud what the characters etched into the stones meant. Venting about the Chinese. James had just gotten to Chongqing from England a week or two before so we mutually vented about cultural differences between the west and the east.

We finished taking photos and exploring. The weather was getting hot. James ran over the boards infested with rats while I took the slower way of tip-toeing over small construction debris. I was lucky to not have had a nail go through my shoe. We bought cold drinks from the magazine stand where we had asked for directions, told the couple how it went, crossed the busy (lacking a stop light or crosswalk) street, then proceeded down the street to find a bus returning to Shapingba District. An interesting adventure to say the least.