China Discovery Tour: CHONGQING

9 March 2026

We flew from Dali to Chongqing and took a Didi ride from the impressive airport to the Glenview Hotel in the city centre (Jiefangbei). The view from our room on the 31^st floor was reminiscent of Manhattan, except that here, everything was on an even larger scale. One can quickly run out of superlatives to describe it.

Little wonder: Chongqing is considered to be the world’s biggest city, with over 34 million inhabitants, and occupying an area larger than Austria. Squeezed between the mountains and the Yangtze River, the city has now nowhere else to go but up, to the point where one building even has a train going through it (more on that below).

Chongqing’s development has been quite extraordinary: in the last 20 years, the city’s GDP per capita has increased 16-fold, the rate of urbanisation has doubled, and it has moved from polluting heavy industry to dominance in the automotive and IT fields. More cars were produced in Chongqing last year than in France and England combined. One in three laptops and one in 10 motorbikes sold worldwide are made here

The Chinese Communist party decided 30 years ago to unify and populate vast rural areas, an experiment that has become a symbol of the Chinese ability to reshape the world. Chongqing’s development reflects the pace of modernization in China and it is truly overwhelming.

Of course, we had ignored all of this when we had put Chongqing on our itinerary. In fact, we had really just come for the Saturday evening Drone Show (in Hanbin Road by the river). It was truly stunning, but there was so much more to see and do here.

The highlights:

• Long Men Hao Old Road, built on the side of a steep hill from the Yangtze. Formerly an industrial area, it has been transformed into an area of craft shops, hip cafes and restaurants. The views of the bridge and river are a magnet for the   Instagram crowd.

• Hongya Cave, one of Chongqing’s most iconic places. Built into the hillside, the complex features a maze of wooden buildings inspired by traditional stilt houses known as diaojiaolou, a style typical of southwestern China. At night, the stilted buildings light up beautifully along the river – a perfect photo spot.

• Eling Park, with a Chinese ornamental garden and pagoda with stunning views of the river

• Bai Gongguan and Zhazidong, former wartime prisons that were haunting and powerful reminders of history and the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1949

• The Buddhist Luohan Temple. Built between 1064 and 1067 during the Song dynasty and remodeled several times since, it is surrounded by skyscrapers. The contrast between the old and new China is fabulous.

• Jiefangbei Pedestrian Street in the main square of the city, and marked by the People’s Liberation Monument, one of Chongqing’s most recognizable landmarks. The area perfectly captures the spirit of modern Chongqing, especially in the evening when the lights are on.

• The iconic Chongqing Art Museum, whose architecture is inspired by Chinese chopsticks.

• Raffles City, Chongqing’s most famous building, located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers. It was designed by Moshe Safdie, the same architect who also designed Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and that’s why the two buildings look similar. There are also riverside walks around the base of the complex, although the best view of the skyline of the city is from the WFC Tower in the pedestrian street.

• Huguang Guild Hall, a beautifully preserved historic complex built initially during the Qing Dynasty as a meeting place for merchants from Hubei and Hunan provinces. 

• Liziba Subway Station, famous because the train actually passes directly through the middle floors of a residential building, creating one of the most photogenic subway scenes in the world.

• Shibati which literally means “Eighteen Steps” and is one of the most famous old neighbourhoods of Chongqing. This place was once a maze of narrow staircases, wooden houses, and small family-run shops that climbed up and down the hillside between the upper and lower parts of the city. The area has been reconstructed to maintain the look and atmosphere of the old neighborhood, combining restored wooden façades with new commercial spaces.

Some cities are best at night, and Chongqing is certainly one of them. During the day, it is often enveloped in a thick mist. But when the lights come on, the city is transformed into a giant, multi-coloured, neon-fuelled spectacle.

Foodwise, we really enjoyed the sumptuous weekend buffets available at the Glenview Hotel but we also feasted on the street food which was savoury and incredibly cheap. A special mention for the famous hot pot, which can contain beef, pork, chicken, Chinese sausages and even pig blood and duck intestine, in a spicy and quite numbing flavour.