Chongqing is one of China's most mind-blowing and least fathomable cities, and that is exactly why it has gone viral. It is a vertical megacity built on mountains at the meeting point of two great rivers, the Yangtze and the Jialing. Skyscrapers climb impossible slopes, metro trains pass through apartment blocks, streets are stacked on several levels, and walking out of a skyscraper on the 20th floor can put you on another street. Often wrapped in fog, with a neon skyline reflected in the rivers, Chongqing looks like a science-fiction city come to life.
But Chongqing isn't just an urban spectacle. It is the heart of spicy food in China and the birthplace of the country's fieriest hot pot. It is also the main departure port for Yangtze cruises, which sail down between the cliffs of the legendary Three Gorges. It is a city of huge historical weight (it was China's capital during the war against Japan), and the base for visiting nearby wonders such as the thousand-year-old Dazu rock carvings or the spectacular karst landscapes of Wulong. It is intense, chaotic, humid and absolutely unforgettable.
This guide explores Chongqing with a practical, friendly eye: how to find your way around its vertical layout and make the most of its out-of-this-world transport, where to have the hot pot experience, how to plan the Three Gorges cruise and which day trips are worth taking. Chongqing is usually visited in two or three days, often together with Chengdu, or as the starting point for the great river journey along the Yangtze.
Chongqing has a long and eventful history. In ancient times it was the centre of the Ba kingdom, a culture of southwest China, and over the centuries it grew into a strategic port where the Yangtze and the Jialing meet, the gateway to the rich Sichuan basin. Its name, which means 'double celebration', was given to it by a Song dynasty emperor in the 12th century. For centuries it was a second-tier trading and river city, until the 20th century propelled it into history: during the Second World War, after the coastal cities fell to Japan, Chongqing became China's provisional capital (1938-1946) and endured years of brutal Japanese air raids. In 1997 the government split it off from Sichuan province and made it a directly administered municipality, sparking breakneck development that has turned it into one of the largest and most futuristic metropolises in the world. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓From the heart of the Silk Road in Xi'an to the fertile Sichuan basin and the Tibetan plateau: inland China of ancient capitals, pandas and the roof of the world.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Chongqing's story begins in the mists of antiquity, where two great rivers, the Yangtze and the Jialing, meet. That meeting of waters has always made it a strategic place. More than three thousand years ago the Kingdom of Ba flourished here. It was one of the cultures of south-western China, and it was distinct from the cultures of the Yellow River valley. The Ba were known as fierce warriors and skilled river navigators, and they left their mark on the region's place names and identity: 'Ba' still appears in local names today. In the 3rd century BC, the powerful state of Qin, the same one that would later unify China, absorbed the Kingdom of Ba. This mountainous region then came into the orbit of the future empire.
Over the following centuries the city grew slowly as a river port. It was the gateway to the rich Sichuan Basin and a transfer point for the trade that moved up and down the Yangtze. It sits on a mountainous peninsula between the two rivers, which made it both easy to defend and valuable for trade. It also made it hard to build on and hard to live in, and that still defines Chongqing today.
The city got its current name, Chongqing, which means 'double celebration' or 'double joy', at the end of the 12th century. The future Emperor Guangzong of the Song dynasty gave it that name to celebrate two happy events in his rise that came one after the other: being named prince and taking the throne. The city has kept that auspicious name ever since. For centuries, though, it remained a provincial town, important for its river but far from the great centres of imperial power.
For centuries Chongqing was a busy walled city that lived on river trade. Its port was crowded with junks, and porters climbed up and down the endless stairways that linked the river to the upper town. Its economy rested on trading salt, silk, tea and produce from fertile Sichuan. The boatmen and porters of the Yangtze became a symbol of Chongqing's hard-working character. The most famous were the 'bang bang', men who carried huge loads on their backs up the city's slopes.
The 19th century brought deep change. After the Opium Wars forced China to open up to Western trade, Chongqing was declared open to foreign trade in 1891. It was the furthest inland of all the treaty ports. Foreign merchants, missionaries and consuls arrived, and the city began to modernise. It also became linked to the international trade routes that ran down the Yangtze to Shanghai and the sea. That opening was the first step in Chongqing's change from inland port to a city of national importance.
In the early 20th century the empire fell and the Republic was proclaimed, and Chongqing kept growing as an industrial and trading centre of the interior. For centuries its remote site, sheltered by mountains, had held the city back. In the decades that followed it was about to become its greatest strategic advantage, when war forced China to fall back into the interior.
The most dramatic and decisive chapter in Chongqing's modern history came with the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), part of the wider Second World War in Asia. Japan invaded and the great coastal cities fell: Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan. Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government then retreated inland and made Chongqing its provisional capital in 1938. Shielded by mountains, distance and fog, the city became the heart of Chinese resistance and a symbol of the country's fight against occupation.
The city paid a terrible price for that role. Between 1938 and 1943, Japanese aircraft bombed Chongqing in one of the longest sustained air campaigns in history up to that time. Thousands of people died and much of the city was destroyed. To survive the raids, people sheltered in tunnels and caves dug into the mountain rock, and some of these still exist. The fog Chongqing is known for even became an ally, because it made attacks harder for much of the year. Even so, the city held out and was never taken.
During those years Chongqing was also a major diplomatic stage. Allied representatives lived there, and the city played a key part in coordinating the war against Japan in the Asian theatre. The Jiefangbei monument, now the heart of the city's shopping district, was built to commemorate victory in that war. That period left a deep mark on Chongqing's identity as a heroic city that held its ground.
After the People's Republic was founded in 1949, Chongqing remained a major industrial centre of the interior. In the 1960s and 1970s it was strengthened by the 'Third Front', a policy of moving strategic and military industry inland, away from vulnerable coasts. The city filled with factories and grew, but it was still a provincial city within Sichuan.
The big turning point came in 1997, when the central government made a far-reaching decision. It separated Chongqing from Sichuan province and made it a direct-administered municipality, China's fourth alongside Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. The move was tied to the huge Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze. The dam meant moving more than a million people whose land and villages would end up under the reservoir. Putting that enormous operation under a single municipal authority was one reason for the change. The decision also reflected a wish to drive the development of western China.
Since then, Chongqing has changed at dizzying speed. Huge investment, massive infrastructure and rampant urban growth have made it one of the largest urban areas on the planet. Counting both city and countryside, the municipality has more than thirty million inhabitants. Skyscrapers, giant bridges, a metro and monorail system that defies the terrain and a neon skyline above the rivers make today's Chongqing one of the most impressive and most photographed cities in China.
Beyond its history and size, Chongqing has a strong culture of its own that is easy to recognise. Its signature dish is hot pot (huoguo). Chongqing disputes with Chengdu over who invented it and claims its version is the spiciest and fieriest in China. According to tradition, Chongqing hot pot began among the boatmen and workers of the Yangtze port. They cooked offal and cheap vegetables in shared pots of boiling broth loaded with chilli, Sichuan pepper and beef fat, to keep warm and make the most of the humblest ingredients. From those working-class beginnings it grew into a national institution and one of the city's defining features.
The other defining feature is its impossible geography. Chongqing is built on mountains where two rivers meet, which makes it a radically vertical city. Its planners have had to come up with astonishing solutions: skyscrapers perched on hillsides, streets stacked on several levels, giant escalators, a cable car across the Yangtze and a monorail that runs through a residential building. In recent years these surreal scenes have gone viral on social media around the world: the train disappearing into a tower at Liziba, the lit-up Hongyadong complex, the neon skyline wrapped in fog. They have turned Chongqing into a tourist phenomenon and an icon of the real-life 'cyberpunk city'.
Today Chongqing combines that historical weight, from the Kingdom of Ba to the wartime capital, with a futuristic present and boundless energy. It is one of the world's great megacities and the economic engine of western China. It is also the starting point for the great Yangtze cruise and a base for nearby wonders such as the Dazu carvings and the Wulong karst. Intense, humid, mountainous and utterly unique, Chongqing has earned its own place among China's great destinations.
