Ringed by mountains which proverbially made the journey here
"harder than the road to heaven", SICHUAN and CHONGQING
stretch for more than a thousand kilometres across China's
southwest. Administratively divided in 1997, when Chongqing
Municipality was carved off the eastern end of Sichuan
Province , the region has long played the renegade, differing
from the rest of China in everything from food to politics and
inaccessible enough both to ignore central authority and to provide
sanctuary for those fleeing it. Recent divisions aside, Sichuan and
Chongqing share a common history, and the area splits more
convincingly into very different geographic halves: a densely
populated eastern plain, and a mountainous west, emphatically
remote.
In the east, peaks surround the fertile Red Basin , home
to most of the region's 110 million residents and one of the
country's most densely settled areas. One of Han China's "rice
bowls", a subtropical climate and rich soil conspire to produce
endless green fields turning out three harvests a year, a bounty
which has created an air of easy affluence in Chengdu ,
Sichuan's capital, and the southern river towns of Zigong
and Yibin . Elsewhere, visitors have the opportunity of
joining pilgrims on Emei Shan in a hike up the holy
mountain's forested slopes, or of sailing down the Yangzi
from Chongqing , industrial powerhouse and terminus of one
of the world's great river journeys. You'll also find that the
influence of Buddhism has literally become part of the
landscape: most notably at Leshan , where a giant Buddha
sculpted into riverside cliffs provides one of the most evocative
images of China; and farther east at Dazu , whose marvellous
procession of stone carvings has miraculously escaped
desecration.
In contrast, the west is dominated by densely buckled ranges
overflowing from the heights of Tibet; a wild, thinly populated
land of snow-capped peaks, where yaks roam the treeline and roads
negotiate hair-raising gradients as they cross ridges or follow
deep river valleys. To the northwest, the mountains briefly level
out on to the high-altitude Aba Grasslands , while south the
ranges run lower but no less severe, cloaked in the impenetrable
greenery of cloud forests. Occupied but never tamed by Han China,
and often excruciatingly difficult to traverse, the west's biggest
appeal is its very inaccessibility. Nearest to Chengdu, there's a
chance to see giant pandas at Wolong Nature Reserve , while
travelling north towards Gansu takes you through ethnic Hui and
Qiang heartlands past the vivid blue lakes and beautiful mountain
scenery around Songpan and Jiuzhai Gou . Due west are
the fringes of Tibet, including Hailou Gou Glacier lying in
the foothills of Gongga Shan , Sichuan's highest peak, and
predominantly Tibetan towns such as Kangding .
New roads and better vehicles mean that getting around
all this is not always the endurance test it once was, though those
heading westwards still need to prepare for unpredictably long and
uncomfortable journeys. Rail lines are restricted by
geography - construction was such a monumental task that Chengdu
was linked to the national network only in 1956 - and most people
use the train only for travel beyond regional borders; the most
useful internal route is along the Xi'an-Kunming line, which runs
southwest from Chengdu via Emei Shan and Xichang. As for the
weather , expect warm and wet summers and cold winters, with
the north and west frequently buried under snow for three months of
the year.