Next up, the social media darling and mega city, Chongqing. Population 30 million! Wow. Although just like Singapore is a city that is the whole country, or Jacksonville is a city that is the whole county, Chongqing is a city that is the whole province. So the numbers are a bit inflated. But it’s been by far the most hyped place in China on social media. I see the lit up skyline on Tiktok or FB reels all the time. Is it worth the hype? Well considering I’ve already been here I think I know the answer to this one.
It was a super quick HSR (high speed rail) ride to Chongqing (ChongChing) although getting a DiDi from the underground parking lots where the rideshare pickup is was a nightmare. And then lots of traffic, even at midday, overly congested like I remembered. My hotel was in some massive building with multiple points of entry. I picked the wrong one, went up to the 26th floor and it was someone’s apartment, oops. The security guard got me sorted out though and I found the place. It was kind of an airbnb style place where the “hotel” just has a block of rooms, each with their own keycode. Housekeeping does come everyday, you just never what time. But because it wasn’t a real hotel it was cheap, $15 I think, and it had a great view overlooking the city. Works for me!
Can’t complain about views like this for $15/night! This is why I don’t travel much in the US!
Same view at night
I went back down and went for a walk, it was definitely bustling outside, a good mix of locals and tourists at the market, streets all pretty crowded. It’s a popular place to be right now and I was basically in the middle of the downtown, JieFangBie, with high rise buildings everywhere. It was also a Friday afternoon.
I decided to head out of the downtown and take a stroll along the river to check out the skyline, but on the side of the river that isn’t where all the tourists go. The city is larger than it looks on a map, it took me forever to get across the river and get to where I wanted to go on the other side. It was a nice walk, and the skyline looks pretty at night, but nothing that would make you think this city has a famous skyline. I think the most interesting part was the section of the street that was basically teen idol street, stands filled with Cpop and Kpop idols and populated by exclusively teenage or middle school aged girls.
I’d gotten far enough away from my hotel that I decided to take a rideshare back, as Chongqing is a really big city and I didn’t feel like walking another two hours. I ended up on the night market street and didn’t know what to get, so I chose one of the longest lines, figuring these people must know what they’re doing. It was ribs, which sounded like a great change of pace from all of the oily food I’d been eating. Seriously it feels like chili oil is running through my veins. The ribs were pretty tasty, but coming from a country with world class BBQ ribs, these were a bit below expectation.
The next day was some more random wandering, as there are just so so few cool touristy things to do in Chongqing during the day, and then it was off to see the skyline from the other side of the river and the Hongyadong Cave, which is 11 stories high, built on the side of rock face and modeled after traditional stilted architecture. It’s lit up to glow a bright golden color at night and has a bit of a fantasy like appearance. Although it was lit up like this in 2012, the difference is that all the skycrapers behind it weren’t lit up quite like they are now. Anyway Chongqing has done a hell of job selling this as some sort of world class attraction.
I crossed the bridge over the river and followed the roundabout section of footpath down to the riverside, where you get a great view of the skyline. That’s if you can find an open spot. Like many famous spots in China there’s professional photographers perched everywhere and they stake out and take up the most valuable real estate, which gets really annoying. I ended up heading down onto the river bank across the rocks and gravel to find a decent spot to take some photos. Don’t get me wrong, the view here is great when it gets dark with the Hongyadong Cave in the foreground. But I feel like Chongqing is only great from 8-10pm, which is when all the city lights are on. It’s a very brief window of coolness.
I feel like Chongqing has used it’s bright shiny lights to belie the fact that Chongqing is mostly a pretty boring, ugly, and congested concrete jungle. Especially once you get outside of downtown. And it has worked out great! Chongqing is more popular than ever. The cyberpunk city! But it feels like fake cyberpunk when the lights go off at 10pm. Lights out at 10pm is not punk. Compared with a place light Kabuchiko in Tokyo, which is lit all night, has people coming and going all night, and is actually kinda seedy, that feels like the real deal, not this. Ok I’m being kind of snob here as to what constitutes ‘real cyberpunk’ but I feel like Chongqing is way overhyped on social media and really is not that cool of a city. I guess it’s cool if you’ve never seen a well lit skyline in Asia before. But lots of people do seem to really like it, so to each their own.
The next day I was planning on doing a day trip, but it rained all day, and I kinda liked my view overlooking the city in the rain from the 26th floor. It was my first do nothing day of the trip. And so was the next as it just never stopped raining. It’s a good do nothing city because there is nothing to do in the city. Of course I’d go out for short walks to stretch the legs and find some interesting things to eat. Chongqing noodles are always good, more of a lunch food though, people love their hot pots in the evening.
Chongqing is well known for it’s very spicy hot pot, so I did have to go out for it one night, although hot pots are meant to be communal, so it feels a bit weird. Usually I get half spicy, half not spicy, but I was feeling spicy and just ordered the whole thing spicy. Two orders of meat, one pork, one beef, some mushrooms, some veggies, which the options were mostly various forms of lettuce, which annoyed me – who wants to eat three different styles of leaf instead of actual vegetables? Anywho the all spicy order was a mistake, I was dying about halfway through, with no respite of dunking some stuff in the non-spicy broth. Just had to power through it. I couldn’t finish everything, it was too much, and oh did it kill my stomach. I could feel the burning on the toilet 36 hours later.
Really should have gotten half spicy, half not spicy!
The rain never stopped, but I had to get out of this town eventually as it was driving me mad, so finally I hopped in a Didi to the HSR station and was off to the next town over, which is only a little over an hour away by HSR (which is crazy fast), the metropolis of Chengdu, with a paltry population of 20 million.