Chongqing: my discovery of China's extraordinary mountain city
Chongqing: a city still little known outside China
In March 2026, I set off on a great journey across China, with one idea in mind: exploring Chinese trains and sharing this experience through a series of articles. This trip also gave me the chance to discover several major cities in the country, such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Harbin, and Guangzhou. But among all these stops, it was Chongqing that struck me the most—a fascinating city still relatively unknown to European audiences.
Chongqing is a metropolis that gets attributed all sorts of superlatives: it's said to be the largest city in the world, but it's also nicknamed the mountain city or the 8D city, meaning it has eight dimensions! It has become the darling of Instagrammers in search of striking images.
I stayed four days in Chongqing, longer than most tourists, who often only spend two days there. I wandered at random, following my inspiration, without trying too hard to optimize my walks. I think this approach allowed me to better capture the spirit of the city.
I'll start with the history and geography of Chongqing, essential for understanding how it became one of China's most astonishing metropolises. Then I'll introduce you to Raffles City, this astonishing architectural complex, iconic of the new Chongqing, where I stayed and spent quite a bit of time.
Chongqing is a complex, teeming city best explored on foot. In a second article, I'll suggest three walking routes to discover the different facets of Chongqing, without spending too much time planning your itineraries. Chongqing is also worth discovering at night in an explosion of lights.
Finally, I end this article with my practical tips for planning your trip.
Knowing Chongqing's historical and geographical context helps you understand it better
To grasp the city's lightning-fast growth, I visited the Chongqing Planning Exhibition Hall as well as the Three Gorges Museum. I highly recommend both. I've actually included them in the walks I suggest in the second article devoted to Chongqing.
Chongqing, a strategic city at the confluence of two rivers
Located in southwestern China, Chongqing sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Jialing, about 1,500 km west of Shanghai and 1,300 km southwest of Beijing. Because of this strategic position, it is one of the main gateways to western China and the Sichuan Basin. Its rugged terrain, crossed by two major rivers, largely explains its nickname, the "mountain city."
The city's history goes back more than 3,000 years, to the kingdom of Ba, which established its capital there in a highly strategic spot, since the city is built on a peninsula at the junction of the Jialing River as it flows into the Yangtze.
From walled city to wartime capital
It was under the Ming dynasty, in the 14th century, that Chongqing became a true walled city, surrounded by ramparts with 17 gates. Its structure remained relatively unchanged until the last century, as shown by another model of the city dating from 1940.
Starting in 1937, facing the Japanese advance, the Nationalist government moved its capital to Chongqing, which as a result suffered intense aerial bombing. Later, having been the wartime capital, it became the seat of the Nationalist Republican government opposed to the Communist power embodied by Mao Zedong.
In the 1960s and 1970s, because of its geographic location far from the sea and from the Soviet Union, the Communist government turned it into a powerful industrial city capable of serving as a rear base for the country in the event of military conflict: the "Third Front."
Since 1997, a metropolis in full swing
But it was from the late 1990s onward, driven by the will of the Communist Party, that the mountain city literally entered a new era to become one of China's most important metropolises.
The construction of the enormous Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River went hand in hand with this transformation; although the city is located more than 600 km upstream from the dam, the consequences were significant for Chongqing. It allowed the city to become a major cargo port and a gateway to inland China.
At the same time, in 1997, it was separated from Sichuan province to become a municipality directly under the central government. This explains the frequent confusion over its population: more than 30 million inhabitants for a territory the size of Austria, which includes rural areas and other cities, compared with about 11 million for the urban area proper. Its unofficial title as the "largest city in the world" comes from this administrative quirk, but it remains gigantic nonetheless!
For nearly thirty years, Chongqing has been undergoing rapid development: a veritable forest of skyscrapers, modern metro and monorail lines, and urban motorways with bewilderingly complex interchanges have sprung up. Its steep terrain has added a dizzying dimension to this 21st-century cityscape. Even more than in Beijing or Shanghai, “the” Chongqing of before 2000 has almost completely disappeared.
Today, the authorities continue to want to make Chongqing a hub of attractiveness for the country's interior, to counterbalance the coastal cities, which have historically been the most developed.
It was while visiting the Planning Exhibition Hall that I became aware of the importance of Chinese-style urban planning. This later helped me better grasp what makes the city so unique and singular, through my discoveries and my walks.
Raffles City: Chongqing's new iconic showcase
The advantage of Chongqing is that it's still little known in Europe. When I got off the train, I had no preconceived idea of what awaited me. The surprise was total!
I arrived in the morning, after an overnight high-speed train journey from Beijing, at Chongqing West railway station: immense, modern, and empty. I took a brand-new metro line that took me to the city center. I had chosen my hotel simply by looking at a map. It's located in the Yuzhong district, at the tip of a peninsula where the Jialing River meets the famous Yangtze River.
Spectacular architecture at the tip of the Yuzhong Peninsula
Coming out of the metro exit, my eye was immediately drawn to the city's architectural symbol since 2019: Raffles City Chongqing. It's a highly theatrical complex of eight skyscrapers, some of which are connected, 250 meters up, by an immense 300-meter-long glass structure, the Crystal.
I stayed a good while just taking in this architectural UFO, which is the XL version of Marina Bay Sands, built ten years earlier by the same Canadian architect, Moshe Safdie, in Singapore.
A hotel at the top of the city
My hotel is located in one of the towers: the Ascott. After checking in with the help of the "Google Translate" app—since the staff spoke almost no English—an elevator shot me up to the 41st floor! As I opened the door to my room, I rushed straight to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking the outside.
I stood there for a long while, mesmerized by the grand view over Chongqing's skyscrapers. On either side of the peninsula, you can see the rivers framing it. So that you can really get a sense of what I saw, I used AI to merge my own photos. The result closely matches what I actually saw.
After a long journey from Harbin via Beijing, I was eager for a swim to cool off and relax before heading out to explore the city. But, to my disappointment, the hotel pool was closed due to a technical issue. An employee, seeing my crestfallen face, told me not to worry and personally took me to the pool at the neighboring hotel: the InterContinental. I was quite impressed by that level of service!
The surprises kept coming, since the InterContinental's lobby is located in the Crystal, the famous glass bridge that horizontally connects four skyscrapers. It's absolutely massive, and the views over Chongqing are breathtaking. Several restaurants and bars let you enjoy it without having to be a hotel guest.
My guide took me up to the pool, located on the 43rd floor, just beneath the bridge. He handed me over to a lifeguard who showed me around: spacious, luxurious changing rooms, a sauna and a steam room, and above all, a 25-meter infinity pool, with those same extraordinary views.
The height of luxury was that I had the entire pool to myself! The feeling of relaxation was total, but it also makes me think about the huge inequalities that exist in China, where such facilities are only accessible to a small handful of the ultra-privileged.
The luxury of Raffles City, between opulence and inaccessibility
I wrapped up my exploration of Raffles City with a visit to the ultra-modern, luxurious shopping mall that spans five floors beneath the skyscrapers. Two things struck me.
The first is that I saw few shoppers in the stores, with idle sales staff, while the huge aisles were crowded with onlookers just strolling through. The opulence that so many major Chinese cities display may just be a facade, one that remains out of reach for the vast majority of the population.
The second thing that struck me was how few foreign restaurants there were in this mall, despite it housing a large number of establishments. I only noticed a Pizza Hut, where robots had replaced the waitstaff, a Thai restaurant, and an Indian restaurant.
This doesn't surprise me, because throughout my trip, I noticed a country that is very inward-looking, with almost no foreigners and tight control over outside influences, both culturally and economically.
Raffles City took up a good part of my first day, since I wanted to take a proper look at its highly original architecture. Despite its sheer scale, Raffles City feels peaceful, as it sits on an immense, tree-lined, pedestrian-only platform. The residential towers are surrounded by lush gardens, with elegant doormen at the entrances carefully screening who's allowed in. Car traffic is pushed out of sight into the basements.
Chongqing by day: the exuberance of a complex metropolis
Chongqing is a city of contrasts that hasn't quite fully digested its exceptional growth of recent years. Even though Chinese authorities have mastered the art of urban planning, the metropolis, with its rugged terrain, has remained somewhat unruly. Monumental, brand-new districts coexist in cheerful disorder alongside older buildings and streets that simply can't be laid out in straight lines.
Thanks to the Jialing River, which flows into the majestic Yangtze, Chongqing also has, despite being located nearly 1,500 km inland, the look and feel of a genuine port city. In some neighborhoods, you'll find an atmosphere reminiscent of Corto Maltese.
A smooth coexistence between cars and pedestrians
Chongqing is a kingdom for cars, with gigantic highway interchanges where even GPS systems seem to lose their bearings! But it's also a city that lends itself wonderfully to walking. The city center is home to a vast pedestrian district around Jiefangbei. In certain spots, I sometimes felt like I was in a small town lost deep in the Chinese countryside.
Chongqing is therefore best explored on foot, with good walking shoes! You go up, you go down, you get lost. You take a dizzying staircase at the back of the courtyard of an old residential building dozens of stories tall, before emerging at the foot of a tower that seems to touch the sky. When you're tired or have lost your bearings, you can always count on the ultra-modern metro, but also on a cable car or ferries.
In my second article devoted to Chongqing, I suggest three walks, one per day, to guide your first steps into discovering this fascinating city.
Chongqing at night: an explosion of light
Every evening, I returned to my hotel thoroughly worn out from my walks, mostly because of the steep elevation changes and the ceaseless bustle of this very dense city. But I always made myself go back out once night fell, because Chongqing at night feels like stepping into a science-fiction film.
Video animations turn the skyscrapers into giant screens. Hongya Cave at night is the spot everyone wants to photograph from the Qiansimen Bridge. The animated billboards are even more striking. Crowds gather to take photos or simply have dinner at the many street-side restaurants.
During my stay in March, a drone show was organized every Saturday at the tip of Chaotianmen with, apparently, remarkable displays. But since it didn't coincide with the days of my visit, I wasn't able to attend.
Even back in my hotel room late at night, the show carried on!
Chongqing: a discovery that makes you want to come back
On my last day, I left Chongqing from the West station again, but this time heading toward Guangzhou. Here too, the authorities had planned on a grand scale, since, in 2026, only part of the hall was in service.
The city's development is far from complete. It makes me want to return in five or ten years to see how much more it will have changed.
Visiting Chongqing fascinated me. Its growth, in a context that is certainly very different, is as crazy as that of another metropolis in the midst of transformation: Dubai. I tell this other story in my article: « Dubai: a fascinating 21st-century metropolis ».
Discovering everyday city life
I especially enjoyed discovering the city in its daily life, away from the artificially renovated historical sites. China promotes, too much for my taste, a form of tourism that resembles a 'disneylandization' of places, transformed into sets intended to entertain tourists.
Coming from Europe, I felt like a traveler from another era landing on an overpopulated, highly advanced planet, yet one with some decidedly old-fashioned sides too. I truly felt like an outsider, facing a language barrier that was hard to overcome.
Unlike in Beijing or Shanghai, English seemed very little spoken in the mountain city, even in international-class hotels. Foreign restaurants are almost non-existent, and the local food is very far from my own European habits.
In an increasingly globalized and standardized world, this travel discomfort—which is also what gives it its spice—is becoming rarer and rarer. In the end, that may be what made me love visiting this city, and appreciate even more returning afterwards to my home in Paris, to an environment that suits me better!
Finally, to move from this first discovery to an actual visit of Chongqing, check out my three walking itineraries in my second article: the three walking routes to discover Chongqing.
Practical tips for your trip to Chongqing
How to get to Chongqing?
By train, of course! High-speed trains connect Chongqing to many of the country's major cities. I have written a very comprehensive guide to Chinese trains, which I invite you to consult to discover them and learn how to use them.
Chongqing also has an international airport with direct flights to Europe and Seattle in the United States, operated by Hainan Airlines.
Finally, one last option is to arrive or depart aboard one of the many cruise ships that sail on the Yangtze to Yichang, passing through the Three Gorges. To find out more, see Yangtze-River-Cruises.com.
As I haven’t taken this cruise, I’d rather refrain from recommending it to you based on personal experience.
When should you visit Chongqing?
Chongqing has a humid subtropical climate. Winters are relatively mild, but grey, damp, with low cloud cover and often fog.
Summers are particularly gruelling, with temperatures regularly above 30°C and reaching 35 to 40°C, or even higher during heatwaves. The humidity makes it feel even hotter. It’s no coincidence that Chongqing is one of China’s so-called "furnace" cities.
Spring and autumn are therefore the best seasons to explore Chongqing on foot. March and April, then October and November, are generally good choices, even if the sky is sometimes overcast and rain or fog can make it harder to take in the scenery.
Where to stay in Chongqing?
In Chongqing, you’ll find a very wide range of accommodation, from the simplest to the most luxurious. However, I recommend that you focus on the Yuzhong Peninsula, near Jiefangbei, to make getting around easier.
Booking a hotel room on sites like Booking.com or Trip.com is as easy as anywhere else in the world. In international hotels, you can usually pay directly by bank card.
If your budget allows, I strongly recommend staying within the Raffles City complex, and be sure to request a room with a view. In particular, you can choose between:
How do you pay in China?
Alipay is a must-have for paying for most of your expenses, from everyday purchases to restaurants, without needing to carry cash.
I explain how it works in this article: My practical tips for going to China and travelling easily by train
Important: set up Alipay before leaving home!
How many days should you plan for Chongqing?
I spent four days visiting Chongqing at my own pace.
Ideally, in my experience, you should plan for three days, with one day for each of the three walks suggested.
After that, depending on your curiosity, you can consider staying longer. In four days, I didn’t see everything—far from it! But that only makes sense if you want to deepen your discovery of Chongqing life by moving away from the main tourist sights.
Finding your way around Chongqing
Amap (Gaode Maps) is a valuable ally for finding your way through Chongqing’s urban maze. It lets you plan walking routes and use public transport, with mapping far better suited to China than Google Maps.
One small drawback, though: Amap won’t always clearly show you the stairways and lifts in this vertical city. Don’t hesitate to ask a local for directions if you get lost!
You can download Amap from Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store.
Should you use an agency?
Online and on social media, you’ll find a multitude of local travel agencies offering to organise your visit to Chongqing.
The advantage is that you won’t have to worry about any of the logistics.
The downside is that the agency will mainly take you to the major tourist hotspots, which are spectacular but often a bit artificial.
If your goal is to discover the real Chongqing, you may be disappointed. From my point of view, travelling independently sometimes means getting lost in the streets or "missing" an attraction. But that’s not a problem, because it’s also part of the pleasure of travel!
Finding information online
When planning your trip to Chongqing, you’ll find plenty of blogs and travel sites. But from one site to another, the same must-see places often come up, without always providing much extra information to understand the city and organise your visits.
Local guide sites can also be interesting, as long as you can distinguish practical advice from commercial offers for guided tours or organised itineraries.
Among the resources I’ve spotted, Notes from China is well worth a look. You’ll find additional information to help you prepare your stay and discover Chongqing beyond the best-known attractions. I recommend reading the excellent article on Chongqing cuisine
祝你旅途愉快！
Have a good trip!
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