5th November: Chongqing, China
A very short walk from our building, under the skywalk of the Raffles Centre, is the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze. We spent a good while looking on in awe at the longest river in Eurasia being joined by one of its great tributaries in front of the never-ending towers of Chongqing. The only thing taller were the spectacular mountains beyond, although of the course this giant city continues on the other side of them!
Chongqing has many nicknames, including the apt ‘Mountain City’ and ‘Cyberpunk City’, and my favourite ‘8D Magic City’. The latter relates both to the multi-layered verticality of the city and its infrastructure and also the blending of the futuristic with the historic. A surprisingly little-known (in the west) historical detail is that during World War II, it was one of the four major allied capitals – on a par with London, Moscow, and Washington. After the Japanese invaded much of eastern China, it was the wartime capital from 1937-45 and suffered heavy aerial bombing. It’s also thought that Chongqing’s famous fog (of which it gets over 100 days per year) played a significant part in thwarting Japanese attacks. Another sliding doors moment in history, perhaps!
One of the more modern fascinations of the city is that it has the world’s longest monorail network (of course it does!). That was our mission for the afternoon. Line 2 was amazing, snaking at least 30 metres above the shore of the Jialing, between buildings, under bridges, and at one point through the middle of an apartment building! I thought this would be a niche transport nerd bit of tourism, but not in China! Incredibly, on this out-of-season weekday afternoon, thousands of people crowded on to a viewing platform below to watch the trains pulling in and out of Liziba Station. Truly “people mountain, people sea”.
Line 3, the world’s longest monorail with 45 stops, took us under the peninsula and then spectacularly across the Yangtze. At one point, we passed under an entire slip road loop towering 40-50 metres high on stilts. Road junctions seemed to always have another layer, connecting to a hitherto unseen part of the city. Everything has something above and below it. There are no ground floors, only the top of something else. We rode around for a couple of hours; such were the fascinations visible from this real-world rollercoaster.
Dinner was a buffet again. I was ever so slightly more ambitious than yesterday but am still apprehensive about eating much at all. Hopefully, day by day, more energy comes back.
As darkness fell, it was time to really feel the cyberpunk side of Chongqing. Almost every tall building was lit up, as if a scene from Blade Runner. I wouldn’t have been too shocked to have looked up and seen flying cars overhead! It would be impossible to see the night sky from here but who needs natural stars when your cityscape is a galaxy of its own. One shopping arcade we walked through was bedecked ground to tenth floor in neon signs, the adverts almost an attraction in their own right. The old Shibati district stepped down towards the Yangtze, with ancient stilted buildings set juxtaposed in front of towering monoliths. Like most old towns in popular locations here, almost every building catered to tourists with the true still-celebrated identity long since eroded. Sometimes China is a caricature of itself. We tried some fresh sugarcane juice, but neither of us were keen. Across the peninsula on the Jialing side, the ancient Hong Ya Dong (new leader in favourite name stakes) was ten times worse. We about-turned to the relative calm of the viewing deck. From there, the cityscape of sci-fi dreams stretched out before us with every tower, bridge, boat, or ancient building lit up. I knew Chongqing was a little ‘out there’, but it is as if we’ve ventured into a giant film set. Nowhere on earth looks like this. Truly the 8D Magic City.
