Chongqing

   Two things were clear as the plane from Beijing passed over Chongqing that afternoon in February. First, the place is massive. Second, it's very polluted. A hazy grey veil of smog lay above the seemingly endless landscape of high-rises and the rivers that flow through the city.

   This first impression of sheer size and pollution proved to be accurate. As we walked around the mega-city in the evening, my throat was scratchy and both my chest and the skin on my face felt tight. It reminded me of my first visit to Beijing in 2007. They've cleaned their act up in the capital, so blue skies there are quite common now. 

   Not so in Chongqing! The rain came the next day, and with it low temperatures and even lower clouds. The pollution eased, but another reminder of Beijing in the noughties was omnipresent: men puffing away on cheap cigarettes. As a former smoker, I don't mind tobacco smoke, but the Chinese brands have a very strong and pretty foul aroma. It did occur to me, however, that it was no worse than the stench of the cannabis which is a feature of British streets these days, and at least it's legal! 

   Very little is old there, sadly. Chongqing served as the capital of China during World War Two, and was blitzed by Japanese bombers as a consequence. Tens of thousands were killed and there's a museum hidden in plain sight where you can learn about the destruction. The Nationalists carried out more bombings in the civil war. 

   The city planners went on a construction spree in recent decades. Buildings soar from the water's edge. Remarkably, the top floor of one of these edifices might correspond with ground level, because the city is built on such steep hills. This was the case with our hotel, where we exited the lobby on the twentieth floor and passed over a short bridge spanning a chasm that led to a small square. 

   At night the skycrapers near the water create a striking spectacle. They are lit up in blue, yellow, white and red, sometimes with advertisements for foreign companies like Pepsi and AXA, more frequently with illegible Chinese characters. The cost of this light show must be astronomical.

    

    The best thing about Chongqing is the food. My favourite Chinese dish is Chongqing la zi ji (deep fried chicken with dried chillis), so I was excited to eat it in situ. I discovered, however, that in Chongqing itself this chicken dish can reach such levels of tongue-numbing heat that you simply can't eat it, no matter how many weak local beers you wash it down with. 

    We left Chongqing on a bullet train from a station that resembled an airport. 

Temple of Heaven

    I like old travel books very much. I have a copy of Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, which was first published around two hundred years ago, and which I keep because I hope one day to travel overland from the north to the south of Spain. It may seem incredible that my main motivation for holding onto the book is to see whether a couple of his observations about Spain still hold true. 

    I've always found these antiquated texts to be a great source of travel inspiration. Imagine my delight, then, when I rediscovered my copy of Nikos Kazantzakis' book Japan, China, written in 1935, in a flat in Beijing. It had lain there undisturbed, in the dark, for at least five years.

    So it was that I decided to go to the Temple of Heaven. Kazantzakis had left this memorable description of his visit ninety years ago:

   ... you climb up farther and you reach the third, the highest terrace. All around as far as the eye can see, an endless plain, the desert that surrounds Peking. And your head feels that it is elevated in the sky...

    Spindly cypress trees line the long avenue that leads from the West Heavenly Gate of the Temple of Heaven. Eventually you turn left, and head towards a large enclosure. In the centre, up three sets of marble steps, is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, where the Emperor 'offered sacrifices to pray for bumper harvests and favourable rain'. It's a magnificent edifice, with a three tiered roof of blue tiles. You can't enter the hall, but you can peer into the dark interior. Being tall, I was able to avoid the melee that formed outside each of the apertures.

    The panorama from the top platform, whose stone surface is crumbling from the heavy tread of countless visitors, is special. It's not very high, but Beijing is such a flat city that you can see for miles. Outside the walls is what looks like a forest of tightly packed trees, then, in the distance, you can see the urban landscape of Beijing. Beyond that, to the north west, is a mountain range, only visible on clear days when the cold north wind chases the haze and clouds away (I went twice, so I know). The desert Kazantzakis spoke of has been covered by buildings, but you can sense it in the dry, dusty air.  

    Kazantzakis was moved by his visit all those years ago:

   When I ascend to the Temple of Heaven... I feel that man is truly sacred, mysterious, a wheel full of magic powers that creates matter in the image of his heart.

    Those days are long gone, however. Now the Temple of Heaven is the territory of attractive young women having their pictures taken. Some are in traditional Chinese dress, while others are fabulously, if rather incongruously, attired in high heels and very swish coats and dresses. Some have a retinue: a photographer, and someone else whose role I couldn't determine. Apparently, having their pictures taken here is a social media phenomenon. At any rate, they really know how to pose for the camera. 

Mount Tambora

   It has been said that travel broadens the mind. I had unexpected proof of this today during a visit to the museum in Grantown-on-Spey. 

   Grantown is one of my favourite places in Scotland. It's a very small town in the Cairngorms, with many handsome and massive old houses. Much of the town is surrounded by forests and woods, where you may catch sight of the elusive native red squirrel. 

   I learned in the museum that the town owes its existence to an eighteenth century landowner named James Grant. He was evidently a very active fellow. In addition to going on a 'Grand Tour' of Europe and having the drive to create a new town, he fathered no fewer than fourteen children. Not quite as randy as J.S. Bach, but you can't help feeling sorry for his wife. 

   The museum lies at the northern end of town, off the main drag, which is known as 'The Square'. It's run by volunteers, and there's a small entrance fee. As well as learning about the tireless James Grant, I discovered that Queen Victoria spent the night in Grantown in 1860. Further, and despite its diminutive size, the town once had two train stations, which, curiously enough, shared the same name. Now, sadly, there are none, although you can at least enjoy a walk along one of the disused lines. 

   At the moment the museum is hosting an exhibition devoted to the nineteenth century artist Edwin Landseer. It was here that I came across a piece of historical background which really caught my attention. Photography is forbidden inside the exhibition rooms, so I took notes instead: 

   In 1815, the Mount Tambora in present day Indonesia erupted. This massive volcanic explosion triggered a period of intense climate change. Ash in the atmosphere lowered global temperatures and caused severe weather events including the 'year without a summer' in 1816. Harsh winters led to failed harvests and livestock losses.

   I very much doubt that the people sitting in roads in London or dousing themselves in orange paint have ever heard of the eruption of Mount Tambora. Perhaps they ought to do some reading. To quote Charlton Heston at the beginning of the movie Armageddon, 'It happened before, it will happen again. It's just a question of when.'

 

The Drunk Tank

   A long time ago, I knew a guy who spent a night in the drunk tank in Montreal. He had incurred the wrath of a pair of Quebecois cops (not the most patient of people, at least at the time), by boozily informing them that the city was a dump and he couldn't wait to leave. They chucked him in a cell for a night and strapped him to a chair. 'I'm not Hannibal!', he told them, as they put some kind of gag over his mouth to shut him up. 

   I thought of him today during a tour of the Town Hall in Berwick-upon-Tweed. A couple of hundred years ago, the whole second floor of this handsome sandstone edifice served as a gaol, and behind one black door lies the drunk tank. It consists of a wide wooden 'bed', large enough for about four hellraisers, with a very uncomfortable looking rectangle for their heads. It has an incline, which was apparently a precaution against them choking on their vomit. Above the bed is a very large window, its size perhaps reflecting a desire to inflict an extra bit of punishment once they began to sober up. 

   This was my seventh or eighth trip to Berwick. Growing up in the south of England, I don't think I ever heard or read anything about it. Had I done so, I suppose I would have lumped it in with the rest of the north: far away, and the sort of place I might be punched in a pub for speaking with a funny accent. 

   I now think it could be the most atmospheric town in the whole of Britain. It's just three miles from the Scottish border, and much of the town is surrounded by a complete defensive wall. Steps lead up to the wall from all over Berwick, and there are ancient lanes and tunnels that pass through the stone. As with other historic settlements, even the street names (Sandgate, Marygate, Hide Hill, Love Lane) have an air of romance about them. The whole place has a faded magnificence, rather like Ronda, in the south of Spain. 

   The Town Hall, which was finished in 1761, lies down a slope at the foot of Marygate, the principal shopping street. It is not the most eye-catching thoroughfare, suffering from neglect and the familiar blight of empty premises. The Town Hall itself is very striking, though. Indeed, it is 'regarded as one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the north of England', according to a sign round the corner. 

   A flight of wide steps leads up to a row of four weather-worn doric columns. There is a sign admonishing would-be loiterers to 'please keep these steps clear at all times'. On the day in question, about a dozen people were, in true, entitled British fashion, ignoring this request. Surmounting all is a clock tower, from which a curfew bell tolls every night. Sadly, I've never been present to hear it; at least, not yet. 

   Half of the aforementioned prison was for debtors. They had to work inside the gaol to repay their debt, either by fashioning coffins or by making nets for salmon fishing. Those engaged in more serious episodes of malfeasance, which apparently included the drunks, occupied the other half. They had a communal area, which must have been an absolute free for all, for the gaoler was only required to visit once a day. Crimes such as robbery might result in exile to Tasmania. As someone who occasionally has to deal with drug addicts attempting to steal alcohol, it seemed like a reasonable punishment to me. 

   One of the walls of the drunk tank bears the scars of eighteenth century graffiti. The level of boredom experienced by the prisoners can be discerned from the banal inscriptions they left for posterity: their initials, names, or the year they were thrown in the slammer. One inmate had made more of an effort, however, etching an image of a man with a hangman's noose around his neck. 

   My friend in Canada also left something at the police station following his night on the tiles: a fake name. 

Tours of the Town Hall in Berwick-upon-Tweed take place at 10.30 a.m. and 2.00 p.m. from Monday to Friday. The price is £2.50. The guide has a fine sense of humour. 

Surgeons' Hall

   I felt a multitude of sensations and emotions as I walked round the fascinating History of Surgery Museum inside Edinburgh's Surgeons' Hall today.

   The first was nausea, which brought back memories of rough ferry crossings and ill-advised rides on roller coasters. I'm sure I wasn't the only man present whose stomach was performing somersaults. Indeed, how else could you feel when confronted by a wax and plaster cast of a pair of testicles deformed by a tumour? 

   At the same time, I had to admire the brilliance of Charles Bell, who made this replica of a man's abdomen. He was, I read, 'a talented artist', as well as 'a renowned surgeon and anatomy teacher'. His gifts as an artist were also evident in a painting (from 'about 1809') of a naked and grimacing soldier suffering from tetanus, his muscles rigid and his body forming an arch. It had the haunting, otherworldly quality of a painting by William Blake. 

   The same sense of sickness washed over me when I saw an image of a man called Robert Penman. The cracked oil painting from 1828 showed a man with what looked like a red balloon or a whoopee cushion in his mouth. It was a tumour, and I felt horrified at the sight of it. 

   As I read his story, however, I was greatly moved, and I felt the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. He had the tumour removed at the age of 24, with no anaesthetic, as there were none at the time. The surgeon, James Syme, 'was amazed at the courage of the young man who did not complain once.' I couldn't help but compare his bravery to the self-pity displayed by so many people in our social media-obsessed age. 

   Strangely enough, the grisly skeletons I saw, which had been injected with coloured wax to indicate the arteries, heart and blood vessels, made me somewhat nostalgic. They were shiny, having been varnished, and they brought to mind the two hundred year old mummies I had seen during my travels in northern Japan in 2014. Yet again, I could sense the travel bug rising within me. 

   It was a pleasure to see an exhibit on Arthur Conan Doyle and his teacher Joseph Bell, who was once the president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. There's a video of an elderly Conan Doyle in a pin-striped suit, describing in his Scots brogue how Bell had inspired him to create Sherlock Holmes. 

   I went to Surgeons' Hall with  a slight feeling of trepidation, as I feared it might have been infected by the same historical revisionism that has blighted other museums and historical attractions in recent years. I was elated to find that it wasn't the case. 

   Unlike many museums in Edinburgh, you must pay an entrance fee of £9 to visit Surgeons' Hall. It's well worth the expense. 

Letter of the Month in Decanter Magazine

 

Darkness

   I'm standing at the end of a line of about a dozen people. They are all strangers to me. We're underground - I don't know how far below the surface - with our backs close to a brick wall. A single torch provides some illumination, then I hear a click and and we're plunged into pitch darkness. 

   We're not in danger, however. We are in fact paying customers on a tour of the Victoria Tunnel, which stretches for a couple of miles below Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 

   It was built in the ninteenth century to transport coal. Not for the first time, I'm grateful I was born much later, for it literally isn't wide enough to swing a cat in. It's also very low. My hard hat keeps scraping the arched brick ceiling, obliging me to lean forward, and playing havoc with my lower back. At one point I sense the first stirrings of panic, brought on by the sheer claustrophobia of the place. 

   In places the floor is wet and I can hear the dripping of water. The walls in these sections are covered with a weird brown scum, which we're told takes several months to remove should you touch it. 

   In the Second World War the tunnel was converted into an air raid shelter. 'Many people were afraid to use it', according to my guidebook, a statement which comes as no surprise at all. 

   Our tour guide shows us the latrines, which look like steel buckets. Apparently, those desperate enough to go had to sit back to back and use newspaper rather than toilet roll to clean themselves. For a moment I consider disclosing that I had a friend at university who did this voluntarily, but I decide against it. 

   Near the end of the two hour tour, I think I have some idea of how the hardy folk of Newcastle must have felt during an air raid. I'm cold, uncomfortable, hungry and I want to leave. A story about how the tunnel got its name flies straight over my head. 

   Eventually we are liberated. I remove my helmet and practically run to Grey Street, where I wolf down a lasagna.