Heaven is a hostel in Chongqing.
In 2018 I traveled to China to meet my partner's parents for the first time. I was nervous; China gets a pretty bad rap and has several travel advisories tied to it. I was also nervous to meet my future in-laws, but that was just the anxiety-cherry on top.
We had time to do some additional traveling, so we picked some destinations of interest that aligned with our travel plans: We'd enter via Hong Kong and leave via Shanghai. We had to go to Harbin for the parental meeting, but we had a little bit of time in the middle to add an extra destination. I voted for Chongqing.
I had only recently learned of the existence of the city after eating Chongqing Xiaomian (literally "Chongqing small noodle") which is a very spicy and very numbing regional noodle dish. A little bit of digging revealed that Chongqing wasn't just some small city that served spicy noodles, but a monstrous tourist destination in china with a population of 30 million. Also, it's the birthplace of hotpot. Hell yes we were going to Chongqing.
Warning: several large photos after the break.
-It was so much more than I imagined. The city sprawls across mountains and rivers, it's filled with architectural marvels, derelict hovels, and ancient shopping districts alike. You could enter a building at street level, take the elevator 6 floors, then leave on a different street level. There's statues of hot peppers, green everywhere, and the men walk around with their shirts flipped up to expose their bellies in the heat.
And what heat! When we visited it was regularly between 30-40C and humid enough to swim in. Combine that with nearly every meal (including breakfast) consisting of 90% chilli oil -- it wasn't long before I was flipping my shirt up like the locals.
But we were talking about heaven.
On one of our excursions we decided to check out the LiZiBa subway station, where the train literally goes through an apartment building (Chongqing is wild). Another destination, the trendy "Testbed 2" was nearby on the map, so we started walking from the station.
The map did not make clear the difference in altitude between the two points.
The empty street zigzagged back and forth up the side of the mountain as we trudged along in the sweltering 40C heat, drowning in the humid air.
We climbed countless stairs, sweating profusely, watching our little navigation icon crawl ever closer to the destination.
Not another soul passed by during our walk -- after all, what idiot would walk up the side of a mountain in this heat? So alone we ascended, marvelling at the sights as we rose.
At one point we found a cave. The neighbourhood we were passing through was filled with old buildings that had no glass in the windows or air conditioning units, and so the neighbourhood was furnished with an underground hangout decked out in fans and a single TV.
Finally, at the end of our ropes, we made it to the outskirts of the small district of art installations and neat shops. We were wiped, there was nothing left in us to spend on adventure.
So we walked into the first door that promised respite -- what appeared to be a cafe. I don't know what the place was called. I called it Heaven.
It was a paradise of air conditioning and bookshelves. The promise of a cold drink, and a wall of windows overlooking the city.
What we'd stumbled into was a hostel of sorts. A hostel / small library / coffee shop / rest area. There were mahjong tables in the back, calm customers enjoying a book and tea, and blessedly there was a row of bean-bag recliner/bed things, unoccupied, waiting for us.
We each took a sip of our iced drinks and passed out.
We spent the next several hours dreamily existing in this space for what to this day I still think was the most relaxed I've ever been in my life. All of my worries melted away in the soft background music as I weaved in and out of semi-consciousness. I perused books in Chinese I had no hope of deciphering. I was free of my anxiety -- about China, about meeting my partner's parents.
We went back the next day when we got tired of exploring (via a taxi this time), and it was every bit as good -- it had lost none of its soft fuzzy edges in fresh light.
I think about Heaven often, still. It's where I go mentally when I need to calm myself. I have a very weak mind's eye, but I can pull up the feeling if not the visuals. To be lounging in cool air, the sweat of a hot climb evaporating. The soft music in another language I don't understand, the spires of a metropolis in the distance.
One day, when I tire of the programming and the making of things, I'd like to open a Heaven of my own.