i tried looking for the chongqing natural history museum at the entrance of pipa shan. i didn't find it (it moved to beibei), so i spent a few hours just wandering the pipashan park, admiring the rooftop gardens from the hilltop view, chatting with a sichuan bird owner, then later with an elderly dongbei tourist from dalian. i also spotted some amazing wild birds, including what looked to be chinese warblers and a colorful finch (silver eared mesia). since jiefangbei wasn't that far away, once i returned to qixinggang station, i continued walking towards the unofficial city center (via xinglong and minsheng lu). i ended up passing some of my old haunts, like tongyuanmen and the little alleyway houses behind it. i even came across something new, what looked to be the korean embassy, but actually was the provisional government of the unified korean republic during the japanese occupation of the first half of the 20th century. originally sunmeng and i were to meet at jiefangbei, but she decided she wanted to stop by guanyinqiao first, so i headed back to the hotel. good thing i did, because in the late afternoon i started to feel like a bout of diarrhea was coming back. we ended up eating jizha gangguo for dinner at a restaurant just across the street from the hotel. for dessert we walked to gyq for some taiwanese bing.

i visited pipa mountain before, the christmas of 2013.