A sprawling megacity of multi-level madness: why Chongqing in China is my wonder of the world
This megacity is like Hong Kong on steroids – a vertically sprawling, astonishing urban phenomenon that can only be understood in three dimensions
Google Maps can be unreliable at the best of times when you’re travelling in China, but in the southern megacity of Chongqing, a map of any kind turns out to be almost entirely useless. Built across a series of impossibly steep mountainsides and vertiginous valleys at the dramatic confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers, it is an astonishing urban phenomenon to behold – a vertically sprawling city that can only be understood in three dimensions.
It is a place where neighbourhoods cling to cliffs, connected by elevated roads 20 storeys up in the air. Metro lines emerge from tunnels through the mountains, only to plunge straight through the middle of residential skyscrapers, which themselves sprout improbably from the sheer slopes. Something that looks close by on the map can turn out to be tens of storeys above or below you. And getting there usually makes for an exhilarating journey.
I first found myself in Chongqing 10 years ago, almost by accident, after my first attempt to enter North Korea was abruptly quashed when Kim Jong Un decided to close the borders overnight, because of his fears that foreigners might bring in Ebola. Stranded in Beijing with time to kill, a photographer friend recommended we head south to Chongqing. “It’s like Hong Kong on steroids,” was enough to convince me.
Nothing prepares you for the multi-level madness of this sprawling metropolitan region of 32 million people. Hong Kong might be known for its elevated walkways and urban escalators that zigzag up its steep slopes, but Chongqing takes this 3D cityscape to a whole new level. To get to places that looked like a couple of blocks away, I found myself taking steep staircases that led to underground escalators, then across walkways to lifts that ferried me up the side of a cliff. Cable cars swooshed past outdoor plazas, where what I thought was the ground level turned out to be the roof terrace of an office block, which plunged 30 storeys down into the valley below.
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