Travel Routes

Hongyadong: The Cliffside Stilt-House City That Glows After Dark

There is a corner of Chongqing where a whole city seems to hang from a cliff. Thirteen storeys of grey-tiled, white-walled wooden houses climb up the rock face above the Jialing River, and when night falls they light up gold — glowing, layered, impossibly stacked. This is Hongyadong (洪崖洞), the "Rongdong" folk-custom scenic zone, a modern reconstruction of the stilt-house (吊脚楼) settlements that once lined the steep banks of the mountain city. To some it looks like a page lifted from Spirited Away (千与千寻). To Chongqing it is simply the city's most photographed calling card — a vertical world where the street on level one and the street on level thirteen are both ground level, depending on where you stand.