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Ciqikou Ancient Town
Ciqikou is an old town preserved in sprawling modern Chongqing, about an hour’s drive from the city centre. It’s an old sleepy town built in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Although it’s preserved as a tourist town you don’t have to pay to get in. The town’s name, Ciqikou, means porcelain harbor, and the community prospered from the porcelain trade. Today it offers a glimpse of the peaceful laid-back life in the Sichuan countryside and is somewhere to take a break from the busy commercial world of Chongqing.
Ciqikou is one of the key historic districts under Conservation in the urban area of Chongqing. It plays an extremely important part in making Chongqing a famous historical and cultural city. With a history of more than 1,800 years, it has some typical traditional and cultural characteristics featured in mountainous areas, where mountains and rivers cross with each other, and the building are in a picturesque disorder.
A number of old courtyard compounds still stand here. Small as it is, the town used to have several temples, and one of them, Taoism temple, had been turned into an elementary school.
The folk culture still sends forth their charms after having experienced a long history. So, it is of great practical importance to conduct integral conservation to Ciqikou. However, at present Ciqikou has been challenged by the problems of deteriorating natural environment, protruding contradictions between traditional living environment and modern life style, serious aging and damages of traditional buildings. This paper aims at these problems and proposes some feasible principles for conservation and renovation of Ciqikou historic district.
What makes the School special is one of its students. Oh, a small class room, small stool and desk, oil lamp, blackboard,  and a picture of Doctor Sun Yetsan, that’s the custom of the time. Nobel Prize Winner Samuel CC Ding, in Chinese we know him as Ding Zhaozhong once studied here. That’s his seat. Hmm, he must be a very good student when he was here. Well, it’s kind of late for me to start the quest for Nobel Prize.
The old town has only two main streets and they’ve been taken up by all kinds of shops. The teahouse puts on a diverse range of entertainment with shows staged from time to time. And this is the famous Sichuan show, ‘Changing the face’. The biggest secret is how the performer changes his masks. In this performance, he has to switch masks something like nine times. It’s such a difficult trick that sometimes it does not work, but the audience will always forgive him.
There was an old show in Sichuan called Nine Changes and this is from that show. There was a Knight-errant called Baiyong who is brings hope to many poor unfortunate people. And when he shows up, he changes his masks nine times. It’s a way of indicating that he will help people, but not ask anything in return. He doesn’t let people know who he is. Today it’s purely a show of skill.
It was really a charming quiet place with transitional Chinese folk culture and construction. You would enjoy the quiet relax and release form the noisy city completely.
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