Chongqing: How Did It Become So Popular?

If you scroll through short-video feeds long enough, you will eventually meet Chongqing. A monorail slides straight through the middle of an apartment block. A man leaves his flat on the 18th floor and steps out onto the street on the 12th. A neon-drenched cliffside complex glows like a set from a sci-fi film. 

Chongqing (重庆, Chóngqìng) is one of the largest and most unusual cities on Earth, and over the last few years it has gone from "off the radar" for most foreign travellers to one of the most talked-about destinations in China. This article looks at how that happened, what the hype gets right (and wrong), and why so many people describe Chongqing as a "city of the future".

A city built on a cliff

The city sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers in southwestern China, in a landscape of steep ridges, deep gorges and river valleys. Elevation changes of several hundred metres within the city are normal. That is why locals call it shānchéng (山城), the "Mountain City", and why a map app is often useless here. A destination that looks two blocks away can be thirty storeys above you.

Most cities solve growth by spreading out. Chongqing could not. With mountains and rivers hemming it in, it had little choice but to grow upward and to stack its functions in layers: roads, rail, shops, homes, parks and pedestrian plazas are all fitted into the terrain at different heights. The result is what Chinese social media calls the "8D city" (8D魔幻城市), a joke on the idea that ordinary 3D thinking is not enough to navigate it.

Some of the details sound invented:

• Buildings often have entrances on several floors. A single high-rise can have street-level access on the 1st, the 12th or even the 20th floor, depending on which side of the hill you approach it from.
• At Liziba (李子坝), a metro line passes through the eighth floor of a residential tower. A viewing platform nearby is crowded with people photographing the train as it disappears into the building. Locals say the noise is far less intrusive than outsiders imagine, because the track is built on a separate structure and the building is insulated from it.
• The Huangjuewan interchange has five levels and fifteen ramps, with traffic heading in eight different directions.
• Some public plazas that look like ground level turn out to be the roof of an office block, with a drop of thirty storeys beneath.

A Guardian architecture critic who first came to Chongqing by accident a decade ago described the experience of moving around it as a cross between Inception and a game of snakes and ladders. It is also worth remembering that none of this was designed to impress tourists. It is an engineering answer to a hard geography problem. The visual drama is a side effect.

How big is it, really?

One of the most repeated claims about Chongqing is that it is "the biggest city in the world" with more than 30 million people. That is a misunderstanding worth clearing up.

China's four province-level municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing) are administered directly by the central government, and their borders include rural land as well as urban areas. Chongqing's municipality covers an area often compared to a small country, and its population of around 32 million includes a huge rural and small-town population. The built-up urban core is far smaller, roughly half that figure by 2019 estimates. An academic who studies Chinese urban development suggests thinking of it as "a sort of province that's called a city".

That does not make Chongqing any less impressive. It is simply a different kind of impressive: a metropolis whose dense centre is surrounded by mountains, farms and villages that all belong to the same administrative unit.

From wartime capital to megacity

The story of how Chongqing got here is older than any viral clip.

A strategic stronghold. Chongqing has been an important river port and regional centre for roughly three thousand years. Its mountains and rivers made it easy to defend. During the Second World War, when Japanese forces advanced across eastern China, the Nationalist government retreated inland and made Chongqing its wartime capital. Embassies, military sites and government offices moved in. Remnants of that era still sit among daily life today. Some of the old air-raid shelters have even been turned into restaurants, where you can eat hotpot underground.

A "rust belt" era. For most of the twentieth century Chongqing was an industrial city, part of Sichuan province. Heavy industry dominated, and when China's economic boom concentrated on the eastern coast, inland cities like Chongqing were left behind. Scholars sometimes compare its situation to the American Rust Belt.

A new status. In 1997 Chongqing was separated from Sichuan and made a province-level municipality. The timing mattered. The Three Gorges Dam project was under way (construction started in 1994 and finished in 2003), and the reservoir displaced well over a million people. Having one administration that could resettle and manage them was part of the logic behind making Chongqing its own unit. At the same time, Beijing launched its "Go West" campaign to develop inland regions, and Chongqing became its anchor city.

The boom. From the mid-2000s, people moved from the countryside into high-rise housing. Between 2010 and 2020 the city's growth was explosive, helped by foreign investment and by industry. Chongqing became a major manufacturing centre, especially for cars, motorcycles and electronics. Ford, HP and other multinationals set up operations. Together with major transport upgrades (new rail, expressways, bridges, an airport logistics hub), the city became a gateway linking eastern China and the interior, as well as Central Asia and Europe by freight rail.

By some counts Chongqing now ranks among the five largest economies of any Chinese city, and in 2024 it was reported to have passed Guangzhou for fourth place. Treat rankings like that carefully, since they depend on how "the city" is defined, but the direction of travel is clear.

How Chongqing went viral

Here is the key question. Chongqing had the geography, the history and the economy for decades. Why did it become cool only recently?

1. It is built for vertical video

Many classic tourist sights are hard to capture on a phone: you need space, a wide lens and a good guide. Chongqing is the opposite. Its drama is vertical. Towers, stairs, cliffs, bridges and light fall into a portrait frame beautifully. A thirty-second clip of a train entering a building tells the whole story without a caption. In the short-video era, that is gold.

2. A mix of organic and promoted content

A lot of the early momentum looked organic. Residents posted their absurd daily commutes. One local photographer and guide's commute video reportedly collected tens of millions of views. A single Instagram post about a building where you think you are on the ground floor but are actually on the 12th passed 17 million views.

But it would be naive to think this happened purely by accident. Chinese local governments are well aware of the power of social platforms, and Chongqing's authorities have invested heavily in tourism promotion and "internet-famous" (网红, wǎnghóng) spots. Some of the buzz is almost certainly paid or supported, in the same way that destinations all over the world work with creators. The honest answer is probably a feedback loop: genuine curiosity created the first wave, and promotion amplified it.

3. The "check-in" culture

In China, the habit of ticking off sights and posting proof is called dǎkǎ (打卡), literally "punching the time card". Signs at Liziba station now advertise it as a best check-in point. Once a place becomes a dǎkǎ spot, it spreads quickly: each visitor produces a new photo that serves as an advertisement for the next one.

4. Foreign creators arrived

The next stage was international. Travel creators started choosing Chongqing as the place that felt "more authentically Chinese" than the polished, English-friendly big coastal cities. In April 2025 the American streamer IShowSpeed livestreamed through Chongqing, and his viewers saw the escalators, overpasses and hotpot in real time. Local companies quickly began selling tours that retrace his route.

5. Policy helped

The country's visa-free push mattered too. By mid-2025 China had introduced visa-free entry for citizens of dozens of countries, and Chongqing's immigration bureau reported that visa-free entries through the city rose by 245% year on year in the first two months of 2025. In 2024 the city received about 1.3 million inbound tourists, an increase of 184%. Local tour operators report that Americans have become one of the largest groups, even though the only direct US flight is a weekly service.

More than escalators

The viral moments get people to the city. These are the things that tend to keep them there.

Food. Chongqing is the home of huǒguō (火锅), hotpot, in the numbing-and-spicy málà (麻辣) style: a bubbling red broth loaded with chilli and Sichuan peppercorn. There is also Chóngqìng xiǎomiàn (重庆小面), the spicy noodles locals eat for breakfast, and a lively street food and late-night barbecue culture. One long-term American resident says it was the food that made him stay for fifteen years. Hotpot restaurants that are open at 2 a.m. are normal here.

The night view. Chongqing's skyline after dark is a big part of its identity. Hóngyádòng (洪崖洞), a cliffside complex of stacked, lit-up pavilions, is the most famous image, but the city has invested in building lighting plans, illuminated bridges, drone shows and fireworks. In June 2025 a show with 11,787 drones set a Guinness World Record in Chongqing. The city has also been adding observation points where you can see the lights from both above and below.

History and culture. The Three Gorges Museum, wartime sites, old streets such as Cíqìkǒu (磁器口), and the UNESCO-listed Dazu Rock Carvings in the surrounding area show another side of the city. The Yangtze River cruise to the Three Gorges also starts here.

Nature close by. Within a few hours you can reach Wulong's limestone karst landscape, which appeared in a Hollywood film, as well as canyons and waterfalls for hiking.

People. Almost every visitor mentions the locals: direct, loud, generous, "as spicy as their food".

Why people call it a "city of the future"

The phrase appears again and again in tourist posts. What does it actually mean?

The cyberpunk look. Concrete towers, exposed infrastructure, fog, steep alleys and neon: Chongqing looks like the set of a science-fiction film. Visitors call it "cyberpunk", and a long-term foreign resident describes it as a futuristic movie set that lights up at night into a "true cyberpunk dream". Much of that is about aesthetics.

Density done differently. There is also a more serious argument. Most of the world's cities will need to become denser to cope with growth and climate pressures. Chongqing is a living experiment in layered urban life, with transport, housing, commerce and public space stacked on the same hillside. Walkways, escalators and lifts do the work that flat cities hand to cars. Whether or not you like the result, it shows what a city looks like when it is forced to think in three dimensions.

Infrastructure at scale. In 2025 the city opened a new high-speed rail station covering about 1.22 million square metres, reported to be among the largest ever completed in one phase. The city's rail, monorail, bridge and cable-car networks are part of daily life rather than showpieces.

A showcase for tech and manufacturing. Chongqing is a major producer of cars and electronics, and a regional hub for newer industries. Autonomous driving trials, smart city projects and a growing digital economy fit the image of a place that is building its future in public.

Speed. Perhaps the most future-like quality is how fast it changed. In a single generation, Chongqing went from a heavy-industry inland city to a destination that has foreign tourists queueing for photos. Visitors who first came ten years ago say they barely recognise it.

A reality check

A fair article needs to include the problems, because plenty of travellers skip over them.

• Summer is brutal. Chongqing is one of China's traditional "furnace cities", and July and August are hot and humid. Spring and autumn are far better, though be prepared for fog and drizzle outside summer.
• It is far from the coast. Chongqing is a long way from Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. It makes more sense as part of a western China route (with Chengdu, pandas, Sichuan food and the Three Gorges) than as a day trip tacked onto an eastern itinerary.
• Some hype is overhyped. Several of the famous spots are crowded photo stops. Seeing a train enter a building takes five minutes. The experience is richer when you stay long enough to eat, walk and get lost.
• Not everything is glamorous. Like many Chinese cities, Chongqing has large blocks of newly built housing at its edges, which urban researchers worry can be isolated and hard to adapt. The "cyberpunk" image is partly a product of industrial grit.
• Language. Outside the main tourist areas, English is limited, and the local dialect is strong. Translation apps and basic Mandarin go a long way.

A sensible approach is to treat Chongqing as a region-focused stop: two or three days is plenty for the city, with a day or two more if you add a day trip such as Dazu or Wulong. Pair it with Chengdu rather than rushing from Beijing to Chongqing to Shanghai in a week.

Final thoughts

Chongqing did not become cool because of one video. It became cool because a combination of old forces finally met the right medium: a terrain that forced creative engineering, a government that pushed the city onto the national stage, a food culture with real depth, and a visual identity that fits perfectly into a vertical frame. Social media supplied the megaphone, both organic and promoted.

Whether it is "the city of the future" is a matter of taste. But it is certainly a city that shows how people cope when the land leaves no room for the usual solutions. If you go, go in a cooler season, bring comfortable shoes and an appetite for chilli, and expect your phone's map to be wrong.

Chongqing vocabulary for learners

Dorota Maczuga

Originally from Poland, Dorota developed a passion for Chinese in high school and spent several years in mainland China and Taiwan. She earned a Chinese-taught Master’s in Political Science from National Taiwan University.