Gele Mountain

It seems I was lulled into a false sense of security by my first week in Chongqing. This week there will be highs between 34-37 degrees C, the warmest it’s been since I arrived. Today I went with a group of PhD students to climb Gele mountain, which is very close to the campus. Little did I know when I accepted the invitation a few days ago that the high for today would be 35. While walking up the mountain it was quite a bit cooler because of the forest, but I was still dripping buckets. One other good thing about being in the forest was that I was breathing the cleanest air one can get in the area. Spend a reasonable time breathing Chinese air and you appreciate why people are spitting all over the place.

When we finished climbing the mountain we arrived at what is called a nong jia le 农家乐. It was basically a huge house that some big shot in Sichuan lived in. It’s now been converted into a strange country style retreat, where city people with money go to on the weekends to eat, play mahjong/cards, and generally lounge around. They play a simplified version of mahjong in the area, where they win with hands that I’ve been taught aren’t worth anything, so it took me a little while to adjust strategies. They were quite impressed that I knew how to play, and they altered the rules a bit after I joked that their winning hands were so ugly.