A Visit to Ciqikou

Written by Caitlin Pinter (Education)

The first time that we went to Ciqikou was on May 13.  Ciqikou is an old town that has been preserved in the modern Chongqing Shapingba district.  The town reportedly looks as it did at the turn of the 19th Century.  There are two main streets that have many different shops, places to eat and and shops that let you try on traditional Chinese clothing, which some of us did. We even found a bit of America when we saw cotton candy being made alongside some traditional Chinese snacks.  The shops carried calligraphy tools for Chinese characters, handmade crafts, toys, and even rice jewelry.  While I was walking along the streets I was very surprised to find that most of the stores featured handmade gifts.  The rice necklaces have pieces of rice paper with English characters spelling your name on one side and Chinese characters on the other side.  The rice paper is placed in a very tiny bottle and some of them have very small flowers inside the bottle too.  My partner was with me during this trip, along with several of the other CTBU partners.  My partner was showing me some of the traditional food that they have in China that I had not seen before.  In China serving food on sticks is popular and I was able to try some of these foods. They were all very spicy.  One thing that I have seen in a lot of different places in China is corn cob on a stick. Many of our partners seem to enjoy this and like to eat this as a snack.  I found a pearl shop, where I bought some jewelry.  Just outside the store there was a man who was opening oyster shells and pulling the pearls out right in front of you.  After the pearl shop there was a store that had a lot of traditional Chinese outfits on display.  I decided that I was going to put one on, and take pictures.  Jackie and Alex also tried of different outfits and took pictures too.  The outfit that I had on was blue, pink and yellow.  It had lots of intricate designs on it and was very beautiful.  After I had put the dress on, the woman shopkeeper did my hair.  I had a hair piece on and rhinestone crown that was very large.  Part of it was in my hair and the other half of the crown was hanging down on my forehead.  Jackie was wearing a traditional Chinese bride outfit and had a very elaborate head piece which consisted of pearl-like bubbles, sticks, flowers, and rhinestones.  We had lots of fun dressing up in these outfits and our partners enjoyed watching us get dressed up and taking pictures with us.  We were supposed to go back to Ciqikou today; however, it is the first day that it has really rained a lot. There was a large thunderstorm last night and it still has not stopped pouring.  Hopefully we will be able to go back again before we leave to return home.