Chongqing
重庆 · Chóngqìng
A city built vertically on cliffs between two rivers, where the metro drives through an apartment block and the ground floor might be the twenty-second.
Photo: Jay Huang · CC BY 2.0
Chongqing is a municipality of 32 million people — larger than most countries — built on a peninsula of steep hills where the Jialing meets the Yangtze. There is almost no flat land, so the city went up and down instead of out: buildings stacked into cliffs with entrances on multiple levels, escalators the length of a city block, footbridges connecting eighth floors, and a light-rail line at Liziba that passes straight through a residential tower, with a station inside it.
The effect is genuinely disorienting and has made the city a magnet for photographers and, more recently, for domestic tourists chasing what Chinese social media calls its 'cyberpunk' quality. Hongyadong, a stack of stilt-house-styled buildings lit gold at night above the Jialing, gets so crowded on holiday weekends that the local government issues capacity warnings.
It was also China's wartime capital from 1938 to 1946, bombed for years by the Japanese air force, which is why the old city has so little left and why there are air-raid tunnels — some now converted into hotpot restaurants — cut into the rock everywhere. And it is the hotpot capital: the local style is a cauldron of beef tallow, dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorn so red it looks like a warning.
Why go
- The most visually extraordinary large city in China, and it photographs like nothing else
- Chongqing hotpot, which is a different and more serious animal than Chengdu's
- The starting point for Three Gorges cruises down the Yangtze
- Dazu Rock Carvings, a UNESCO site of 50,000 sculptures, 90 minutes away
Highlights
Liziba monorail station
Line 2 passes through floors 6–8 of a 19-storey residential building. Watch from the viewing platform below on Zhengjiayuanzi, or just ride it.
Hongyadong
An eleven-storey stilt-house complex built into the cliff above the Jialing, floodlit gold after dark. Absurdly crowded; go at 22:30 or view it from Qiansimen Bridge.
Ciqikou old town
A Ming-Qing porcelain shipping port on the Jialing, now a snack street. Commercial, but the riverfront and the temple above it are good.
Kuixinglou 22nd-floor exit
A building where you enter at street level on floor 22 and exit at street level on floor 1 on the other side. The single best illustration of the city's geography.
Dazu Rock Carvings
90 minutes west: 50,000 Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian figures carved from the 9th to 13th centuries, culminating in a 31 m reclining Buddha at Baodingshan. UNESCO, and outstanding.
Yangtze cable car
A working commuter cableway across the Yangtze, ¥30, with the best cross-river view in the city.
Photographs
Getting there & practicalities
Getting there
Chongqing West and North stations: 2h from Chengdu, 6h from Xi'an, 8h from Guangzhou. Jiangbei airport has broad connections. The metro is extensive and includes several stations that are tourist attractions in themselves.
Tickets
Hongyadong free (timed reservation on busy nights). Dazu Rock Carvings ¥115. Yangtze cable car ¥30 one way.
Opening hours
Hongyadong lights come on at dusk and run to 23:00; Dazu 08:30–18:00.
Best time of day
March–April and October–November. Chongqing is one of China's 'furnace cities' — July and August routinely exceed 40°C.
What everyone gets wrong
- Navigation apps struggle badly here because they cannot model vertical layers. Expect to get lost; treat it as the attraction.
- Order a yuanyang (split) hotpot with a clear broth side, and dip everything in the sesame-oil-and-garlic bowl to cut the heat.
- Do not drive here. Take the metro, which is remarkable in its own right.
- Three Gorges cruises start from Chaotianmen dock — 4 days downstream to Yichang is the standard run.
- Dazu is a genuine highlight and skipped by almost every foreign itinerary. Do not skip it.
What to eat
- Chongqing hotpot — Zhu Yang Xiao Mian district, or a converted air-raid tunnel restaurant
- Xiaomian: the city's breakfast noodle, chilli oil and pepper, ¥8 a bowl
- Jianghu cuisine — laziji (dry chilli chicken), and boiled fish in chilli oil
→Combine it with
Nearby and next
The Yangtze Three Gorges 长江三峡
Two hundred kilometres of gorge on the world's third-longest river, ending at the largest hydroelectric dam ever built.
Chengdu & the Panda Base 成都
Pandas at breakfast, mahjong in a teahouse by ten, and the most numbing food in China by dinner.
UNESCO
Zhangjiajie 张家界
Three thousand quartz-sandstone pillars rising out of the cloud — the mountains Avatar borrowed and never gave back.