Mint over coconut. Fig pastries on the side.
Doesn’t sound like much — and maybe it isn’t. But after hours wandering Chongqing’s hills, staircases, and alleyways steep and shadowed, thick with oil smoke and rain-soaked stone — it’s a damn good way to end the day.
The space? Feige Pavilion. The room? Once a balcony, now just screened windows thrown open to the night. Crickets tuning up outside. A breeze that knows things.
This isn’t just any corner of Eling Park. This was once home to Chiang Kai-shek and Soong May-ling. The Generalissimo and the First Lady of the Republic of China. Power used to live here. Real power. The kind that made world leaders sweat.
Now? It’s mint and coconut. A soft chair and the smell of fig.
History doesn’t announce itself here. It lingers. It seeps in through the cracks in the floorboards and hums beneath the quiet. You sit still long enough, and you swear you can feel it. The whispers of deals made, of dinners with ashtrays full and radios humming with static.
But that was then.
Tonight, it’s just me and the soft hum of Chongqing catching its breath. And honestly — that’s more than enough.
George Morgan
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