A few weeks ago, my future mother in law came to visit our home in Chengdu. That has been one of the great draws and selling points for the move to Chengdu; since Chengdu is in the west, it’s much closer to Hui’s parents in the Gansu providence. Anyways, it’s not exactly American culture to have your future mother in law stay with you for over three weeks but the benefits include amazing home cooked Chinese cuisine, Chinese speaking practice, her company and last week – a free boat cruise.

Last week, all three of us had decided to go to a city called Chongqing for the weekend. Chongqing is a humungous city in the western region of China and is particular known for its beautiful skyline overlooking the river and for being the birthplace of China’s precious delicacy – hotpot. So we had decided that we were going to go to Chongqing for the weekend since its only about an hour and a half bullet train ride from Chengdu. What I didn’t know, was that Hui and her mom were planning an awesome boat cruise.

We left early in the morning on Thursday to catch our bullet train (America needs some super cool bullet trains), since it’s always a pain in the butt for foreigners to travel in China. I shouldn’t say always, what I mean is it can get annoying. Where Chinese can simply take their ID cards to an automated ticket machine to receive their tickets swiftly and efficiently, us foreigners have to find the single designated all encompassing line and then after waiting in that for too long, often be redirected into another line not to mention the language barrier. The train stations are the worse, but whatever – it’s China. Anyways we got our tickets, boarded our train and enjoyed the picturesque views of the Sichuan countryside; beautiful rice paddies and farms amidst a lush garden of greens.

When we arrived in Chongqing, we were greeted by a young Chinese man. This is where the title of this article starts coming into clarity. Having lived here in China for almost two years and have dated Hui for the entire duration of my stay here, I’m beginning to grow accustomed to this sort of special treatment. What do I mean? Let me explain – almost everywhere I travel with Hui in China, we are always escorted by either one or two men in private cars. Often times Hui doesn’t know who these men are and just says they are family friends or friends of her dad, or friends of friends of her dad. I’ve learned to stop asking questions and pause my state of bewilderment towards these treatments. And the car rides are just the beginning. The gifts are what really sets this treatment apart. In the gift-giving culture that is China, I can’t even begin to explain how many gifts I have received from these bizarre strangers. And it often appears to be to impress Hui’s dad. I have received everything from free fruits and snacks, Chinese souvenirs (sometimes pretty expensive), and more recently big ticket items like free hotel stays, a free $500 cruise or gifts that I won’t mention here but are well worth over $5,000. This phenomenon is beyond me, but I have come to just accept them. Hui’s dad is a high-level doctor in China with a plethora of connections, but he might as well be some sort of mob boss.

So in Chongqing, this guy picks us up in his nice SUV and takes us to a gorgeous mountain overlooking the city where we are treated to an amazing hot pot lunch via one of the most famous restaurants in Chongqing (apparently it draws quite the crowd with an hour to sometimes two hour wait each and every night). After our great hot pot meal, the best I have had the privilege of trying, we venture to the river side to experience the sort of most historic and famous Hutong of Chongqing.

Chongqing is one of those cities that I had barely heard about, but have steadily become more acquainted with it since I have moved to the west of China, but I was amazed by its beauty. Chongqing is one of China’s four direct-controlled municipalities which also include; Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Chongqing is a towering sprawl of a city nestled right on the peninsula between two giant Chinese rivers, one being China’s Yangtze River which is the largest river in China and comes with a great deal of cultural and historical value. Chongqing has a staggering population of 30,000,000 people and an urban population of 18,000,000. According to our new Mafia friend, it has the third worst traffic in the world and Chongqing is known for its actual recent history for cultivating a sort of mob/gangster crime ring within its city limits and among China. That being said, Chongqing possesses a breathtaking skyline that perhaps rivals the likes of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Chongqing – just one of the many great Chinese cities that we Westerners have probably never heard of.

My brief stay in Chongqing was great; an amazing introduction into the city thanks to my mob friend. The city’s atmosphere is very distinctly southwestern but it also has more of a cultural hub feel to it since it borders four providences (Shaanxi, Sichuan, Guizhou and Hubei). I think the thing that really stuck out in my mind, is when I asked my young mob friend what the difference between Chengdu and Chongqing was in his mind, he said, “Chongqing is real. Its people are real. Chengdu can tend to be a bit superficial.” That made a lot of sense to me and I very quickly began to pick up the sense that even though these cities are geographically close and share many cultural similarities, they also have a bit of rivalry between the two.

As night approached, we said goodbye to our little mobster buddy, received his onslaught of gifts of fruits and snacks and boarded our fairly large cruise ship just beneath the now lit skyline of Chongqing.