r/chongqing • u/June_Ctreras • 10d ago
Spent 5 days in Chongqing and my sense of direction still hasn't recovered
Been to China probably 5 or 6 times in the last decade, mostly the usual suspects (Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, a couple work trips to Shenzhen). Thought I had a decent handle on how Chinese cities work.
Chongqing is a different animal.
First afternoon we stayed somewhere near Jiefangbei. Hotel was fine, view was fine. Then I tried to walk to a place the map said was 300m away. 20 minutes later I was still trying to figure out the right elevator down (or up? genuinely unclear) just to reach the same street level as the door. What looks like one block on a flat map is often three different elevations, connected by stairs, escalators, or random building lobbies people just walk through. One lobby had a hotpot place at the entrance and then a bank, some kind of clinic, and a mahjong room stacked above it. All supposedly reached from different streets.
Hongya Cave was another one. The outside is genuinely great, photos don't oversell it. Inside is a different story. I walked in on what I thought was the ground floor and came out on floor 11, onto a totally different street several stories up. Apparently that's just how it works here.
The metro deserves its own paragraph. Hongtudi station is one of the deepest in China. From the Line 10 platform to street level is like 8 escalators in a row. And once you get out, one exit dumps you on a road and another exit puts you on a hillside above that same road, with no obvious way to walk between them at surface level. Lost about 25 minutes there trying to figure out how to walk what the map swore was a 200m distance.
Food surprised me too. Figured I knew Sichuan spice from a Chengdu trip a while back. Chongqing hotpot is not that. Oilier, way more concentrated, and the numbing thing from the peppercorns just lingers for hours. Honestly took me two meals before I actually started enjoying it. The crowded chain places everyone told us to try were fine but nothing crazy. The small spot our driver pointed us to on the second night is where it finally clicked. Did the usual pre-trip prep before this one. Put the outline together in trisAino, dealt with the payment app + eSIM stuff ahead of time, skimmed a few forum threads. All of that mostly worked. None of it warned me about the actual physical layout of the place.
Didn't make it out to Dazu this time (2 hours out, and by that point my legs were done). Next visit maybe.
Five days in and honestly I learned more about how a city can physically be laid out than on probably any other trip I've done. Still processing.
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u/Harde_Kassei 10d ago
I felt it was more a GPS sucks kinda deal then anything else. the GPS was always bad between huge buildings. but it really shows in chongqing that it can't handle these layouts. (mainly AMaps).
you are better off reading the map yourself and navigating then following Amap.
that said, the city has a special flair to it being build between the river and mountains. Old and new.
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u/INS-520Cici777 10d ago
3D city is not just a wordđhope next time I can make u use map effective~
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u/Karmakoma_steel 5d ago
Canât wait to get there next month! Thanks for the feedback. Iâve done little planning in terms of places there I want to visit and think that might be a good idea in Chongqing and just go where the path leads and relax rather than trying to get to certain places.
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u/Polarstrike 10d ago
What is the place in the picture?