Read Online Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube - Free Book Online Page A

the sky and a constant racket of pile drivers and bulldozers hammered at my eardrums. A great empty pit yawned directly below me and from it to the end of the street everything had been demolished. The only intact structures I could see were the produce markets that were housed in what looked like heritage railway sheds two streets away.
    The Hotel Huixianlou was in the process of being remodelled, which meant that its prices would go up. In my room, half the light bulbs were blown, cold air poured in through big gaps where the windows didn’t fit adequately, the wall paper was peeling off in strips, the cases of the airconditioners– which of course didn’t work – were missing and two of the wall lights hung from their fittings by a thread. The room had a television with no sound and one cupboard, padlocked shut! The beds had no mattresses. You slept on one blanket spread on a flat wooden base. A tiny pillow and one more blanket (they were rationed one to a bed) made up the sleeping apparatus. I pillaged more blankets from the spare beds. It was still fairly cold. I had hoped that this far south the weather might be warmer – but Chongqing is high in the mountains.
    Wondering why I could hear the guests in the adjoining room so clearly, and smell their cigarette smoke, I discovered that the walls at both ends of my room were only thin partitions. My bed was against one of these and a gap gave me, if I had been so inclined, direct access to my neighbours. Lovely people, they came home at two or three in the morning, shouting and screaming and blew cigarette smoke in my face as I lay in bed.
    As soon as I had staked my claim to a piece of the dormitory, I went for a walk. The Hotel Huixianlou is in one of Chongqing’s main streets that are lined with shops. They were mostly small places that sold clothing, but there were a couple of big department stores. In all the shops the merchandise – even torch batteries and chewing gum –was safely locked away under glass. Then, as an added safeguard, a sentinel was stationed at the exit. Even a posh furniture shop came complete with a guard at the door – to stop you walking in, picking up a sofa and making off with it under your jacket.
    Near the hotel I found a very lively night market. Although it was quite dark by then, I felt safe wandering around it, until I became aware that two young blokes were following me and eyeing my handbag. I slowed up and meandered along, stopping now and then until they had to pass me. Then I followed them. They kept looking around to see where I was, but it’s hard to mug someone who is in the crowd behind you.
    I went into a restaurant and with the help of the phrase-book asked what their specialty was. The waitress pointed to an item at the top of the Chinese only menu. I said, ‘Okay.’ A big heap of chunky chopped meat, cauliflower, eggs and gravy was conjured up. I had no idea what it was, but later I read that the specialty of this area was dog. And when I saw skinned dog carcases, all red and bloody, but identifiable because the heads had been left on, hanging in the market, I knew that what I had enjoyed was man’s best friend, Fido. A restaurant I frequented later sported a glass-fronted charcoal grill in which three dogs complete with heads and crisp brown barbecued skin rotated.
    I did not get much sleep that night. The building construction continued, under floodlights, beneath and all around me. Bulldozers, cranes, jack-hammers and pile drivers roared, thumped and bumped, accompanied by whistle blasts and yells until after one a.m. Then very early in the morning the clamour started again. When the building noise stopped my rowdy neighbours took over, rested briefly, then started up again at five to compete with the construction teams. This went on every night I spent in Chongqing, but I survived by using ear-plugs.
    For all that, I decided that I liked Chongqing. Its streets were narrow, bent and twisty and went up and down