Travel Notes #渝中半岛
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.
Jiefangbei: The Monument That Beats at the Heart of Chongqing
There is a spot in Chongqing where time folds in on itself. A 27.5-metre stone spire stands at the centre of a swirling intersection, ringed by glass skyscrapers and flashing neon. This is Jiefangbei — the Liberation Monument — and it is far more than a landmark. It is the only monument in China dedicated to the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a silent witness to a city that refused to break, and today the pulsing heart of southwest China's most dazzling commercial district. To understand Chongqing, you must start here.
Raffles City Chongqing: The Eight Ships That Sail Above the Two Rivers
At the very tip of the Yuzhong Peninsula, where the muddy Yangtze collides with the green Jialing, eight glass sails rise 350 metres into the mist and lock themselves together with a single 300-metre sky bridge. This is Raffles City (来福士) — Moshe Safdie's love letter to a port city, a vertical shipyard suspended above one of the busiest confluences in China. It is controversial, enormous, and impossible to ignore: once you see it, you will never look at Chongqing the same way again.