This city… is not for the faint of heart. This is a city you will never forget. Nor is the mountain city, as it is known, for the weak legged, or for people with a fear of heights, or for sensitive stomachs.
But if you want to visit Chongqing in southwest China, you will spend an exciting night in a megacity that has exploded in size over the past 30 years. 32 million people live in this city almost the size of Austria. It’s one of the largest in the world in terms of area – and still growing.
But hardly anyone outside of the region has heard of Chongqing. People think it sounds very Chinese. Chongqing… Chongqing.
I’ve never met anyone who knows where it is. Here’s an inside look at the city ready to step onto the world stage. Then foreigners will also know Chongqing, and not just Beijing or Shanghai.
Chongqing is quite photogenic, with all its comings and goings. In China it’s a tourist magnet, known for not only growing outwards, but also up and down. And it’s famous for its night life.
It’s common to stay out all night here until everywhere closes. We want to experience this mega night out. At first glance, Chongqing, which is far away from the capital, seems more relaxed, even freer.
Young people here want to do everything differently from their parents. They show us how they live and survive in the megacity. For tourists, Chongqing nightlife gets going when these lights go on.
Hong-ya-dong – there used to be an old city gate here. Today, nothing here is old. This tourist paradise just pretends to be; it’s been completely rebuilt, and crammed with souvenir stores and restaurants.
That’s why Jili calls it the new old city. The city guide has better sightseeing tips for Chongqing in southwest China. This city square, for example.
It’s really one of a kind, he says. Because it’s not really a square at all. This square is the roof of a building.
What, the roof? Yes, there are also many levels down below. That means “upper street”, let’s keep going and then take a look down there.
That’s the end of the square! ? Yes, are you a bit scared?
We went from this upper street all the way to the end of the square. Then you can take the elevator down 22 floors. When the elevator door opens, we see another street, so we go from street to street in an elevator.
It’s typical in this mountain city. Chongqing, the mountain city, is a stacked city, a 3D city. There are gas stations with different levels here – and city guides like Jili are very popular because it’s not easy to find your way around on your own.
You won’t get far with a maps app, because it shows you whether you’re in the right place, but not on which level. Jili was born here, lived in Augsburg for several years and now tells visitor groups the story of how this city went from being a “large village” to a megacity. The high-rise buildings were built very suddenly, within seven or eight years.
It’s a real concrete jungle. As a local, I should know my city very well, like a cab driver, but I can’t say that anymore as it has 32 million inhabitants and more and more new roads, new buildings. What has remained are the stairs.
Nothing works in Chongqing without them. Jili loves them, he calls them his fitness studio. And they are not only a tourist attraction.
Those who know their way around use them as a shortcut through the city center maze. Li Zicheng also tries to make his way through this labyrinth of stairs. It’s an intersection with three directions.
He has been working as a food delivery driver for a few years now and knows all the little alleyways, crossings and secret routes. There’s a rain canopy and a mirror, I can go down that way. Is that right?
Okay. The order has finally reached its destination. Number 7-3.
Enjoy! He belongs to a generation that wants to do things a bit differently from their parents: Less pressure, less work, enjoying life more. But his job still is stressful, especially in Chongqing.
I’ve also worked as a delivery driver elsewhere, where the roads are flat and much easier to find. For example, if the first floor is next to the street, but if you don’t know where to enter, you might have to climb the stairs to the 6th floor and then there is a completely different first floor. That sounds confusing and the streets of Chongqing are indeed confusing – with houses that start at a completely different level on one side than on the other.
Li Zicheng is finding his way, not only for the next order, but also for his life. He ventures further into the labyrinth of the city and we’ll try to meet up with him again later. Martin has already managed to build something for himself.
He calls what he does here “playing the panda”. It’s how he attracts customers to his restaurant. Three people?
Outside or inside? For go-getters like Martin, this city has a lot of potential and he is something very special here. People are surprised at how well he speaks Chinese, but also at seeing a foreigner at all.
Chongqing is a city of 30 million and there are maybe only 30 Germans… If you think about it, that it’s a city with 30 million people, and there are only 30 or 40 Germans, of course it’s normal when people see a foreigner here they say: Wow! Never seen a foreigner before. So when children see me in the street they often exclaim: Wow, “Laowai”, a foreigner!
In the middle of the Chinese megacity, the “Loawai” sells typical German food. They now have six locations in the city. He came up with the idea together with Wang Sien, the other partner of the Gebrüder Wurst, or “Sausage Brothers”.
I’m from Germany… Not from the same mother, but still like brothers. He also calls me his second wife. I hope the wife is not jealous.
He previously worked for a German restaurant in Singapore and discovered his fascination for German culture there. We have Sundays schnitzel day, when lots of Germans came to the restaurant and drank beer. In the morning.
As a Chinese, I would think oh it’s crazy, drinking beer in the morning. He then met Martin in Chongqing. And it was love that brought Martin here when he followed his wife to her hometown.
When I met my wife, I had never heard of Chongqing. I think there are still a lot of people who will think this city sounds very Chinese. Then I arrived here and was thrilled.
Just like that, in the middle of nowhere, in a city you’ve never heard of. With an enormous skyline, so huge and so many people. There must be opportunities here to do some business.
But he failed several times as he had to become more familiar with his new home first. He tells us the difference between a German and a Chinese currywurst. One big difference is that we make them spicy here.
Because Chongqing is the capital of spicy food. That’s why there is even more spice on every table. If this city is too spicy, you are too weak.
I wanted to find out why spiciness is so important to the people here. City guide Jili shows us Chongqing-level spicy. With some hotpot, which is said to have been invented here.
At that time, there were several large butcher’s shops on the Yangtze and the meat was easy to sell, but organ meats were more difficult. It was cheap – and was added to the hot broth. It’s still like that today.
Fortunately, there are also vegetables and tofu. The spiciness is in the air in the restaurant, it stings my throat and nose a little. Jili has the solution.
This is sesame oil to put out the fire, the spiciness. It looks like a can of beer, but it’s not beer, it’s sesame oil. But the oil doesn’t help much.
In Chongqing, we encounter hotpot on every corner. But first, sausage seller Martin has invited us to his home. He has lived here for ten years and is originally from a small town near Aachen.
His first idea in the megacity was to import German beer. But it flopped because the difference between German Kölsch beer and Chinese beer was not great enough for his customers – and it was too expensive. Then he thought about selling sausages.
That was before we opened the restaurant. We were just trying it out: How will people react to our sausages, the currywurst etc. We sold them at markets and music festivals.
That was almost traumatic for me. Wurst, wurst, wurst, every day for 12 hours straight. And I was wearing shorts back then, you might not be able to see that here.
We fried so many sausages and so much oil splashed around, that I had big blisters on my legs. They opened a fast food place. But eating German food standing up did not go down well with the Chinese either.
They like to sit down. They think okay, if I eat Western food, it should be fancy where I sit in a chair at a table. And I take my time, and relax.
But we were just quick, quick, quick, the sausage, out in two minutes, go, go! Take it with you. Even after so many years, Martin is still overwhelmed by his gigantic chosen home every day.
The bell, that’s the church down there, a Catholic church. It’s been here for 100 years. It’s a bit like home to hear a church bell.
Chongqing wants to be a big international city with an image. Yes, you can show it off. The skyline really is… What other city has a skyline like that?
In the end, it’s very refreshing or something very different for the people here to see a foreigner who can speak Chinese so well and who then introduces people to German products or German culture. I think that’s my purpose here. He also does this on the internet.
Livestreaming is the trend of the moment and we see it on every street corner in Chongqing, with people holding their cell phones in front of them selling products or entertaining their millions of live viewers so well that they receive monetary gifts online. It’s a billion-dollar business in China – tolerated by the state, even supported as an economic sector. As long as it remains within the narrow limits permitted by state censorship.
Like everything else in China, this is strictly monitored. Martin sells vouchers for his restaurant. He also brings other German products to market and receives a kind of commission for each sale.
Martin spends four to six hours a day in front of his phone. We don’t want to stay that long though and decide to make an appointment for later. The moment night falls in Chongqing is the perfect time to meet with a woman who is turning her life upside down.
“Escape the Sunset” is the name of her band. Xiao Xian doesn’t yet know whether she’ll be able to escape her old life. But this already feels so much more like herself, and she wants to show us that.
How did we meet? Some of the band members were already friends, a few had made music together before, some met online. We are all music lovers who are active online.
The 24-year-old is a little nervous. It’s the first time the musicians have spoken to foreigners. After all, there are very few of them in this megacity.
Xiao Xian takes us with her. She has bought a car to better organize her new life. Her goal is to devote herself entirely to music for a year – and hopefully be able to be able to support herself by the end.
Since then, her life has taken place almost exclusively at night. Today, she – and we – have a full schedule. I don’t work during the day, that’s when I rest.
And now, when everyone is enjoying the nightlife, that’s when I’m at my most active. Practical, affordable electric cars from Chinese manufacturers are increasingly replacing German brands on China’s roads. For Xiao Xian, her car is a symbol of her new freedom.
For Yang Ping, it’s his motorcycle. He also prefers to be out and about at night to escape the hustle and bustle of the big city. He has lived here his whole life, and spends most of his time on his bike.
His home city is the ideal place for the 38-year-old. Other cities are flat, and you can drive a moped. That’s not possible here.
Here you need the power of a motorcycle. Chongqing is the capital of motorcycles, there are also many motorcycle manufacturers here. As a teenager, he would often steal his father’s motorcycle.
Today, he manages a motorcycle store. The car carries the body, the motorcycle the soul. This is where the city’s love of hotpot is taken to the extreme.
The entire hill is one huge restaurant. They proudly celebrate their record as the largest restaurant in the world – with room for almost 6,000 guests. Here they serve hotpot – and of course, it’s quite spicy.
No spice, no happiness. Three days without hotpot and we’re not doing well. Gao Yu prepares the hotpots in the kitchen.
1,000 per evening, hundreds more on public holidays. Before he does his television interview, his boss tells him to put on a T-shirt. You can’t do without hotpot any more than you can do without your wife.
If you don’t have it, you miss it. If you don’t eat hotpot, it’s as if you’ve never been to Chongqing. Because Chongqing lies on two rivers, many different people have always come to the city by boat, Yang Ping tells us.
This is probably one reason for the special atmosphere here. The people are friendly and hospitable. Whether you’re a local or a visitor, everyone here is nice to each other.
It’s a city worth living in. Worth living in, but also stressful. Yang Ping has a cure for that.
Riding a motorcycle relieves stress. Life today is so fast-paced, so much going on, at work, in life. It helps me to reduce my stress levels.
When I’m on my bike, I don’t think about anything else, I just concentrate on riding. Singer Xiao Xian is also on the road again, on her way to her next gig. She’d been working for a film production company, but when it went bankrupt, she saw it as an opportunity.
Her dream of becoming a musician is also a rebellion against her parents. They think it’s a waste of money and want me to do more meaningful things, like learning English or maths. So it’s all the more important for her to earn her own money.
My dream is to achieve something with my music, for people to know that there is a girl like me who makes music… that at least in Chongqing there are some people who know that. If my work can make a difference to the world, it’s worth it to me. Chongqing’s permissive nightlife sometimes makes us forget about China’s political system – but only briefly.
The city is known for its LGBTQ scene. However the Chinese state didn’t allow us to film it. Our interview with a drag queen fell through after local authorities started getting involved.
Back to the Chinese tourists. The most important thing for them is to bring back good photos from their vacation. Chongqing is a paradise, with good spots for good photos, absolutely instagrammable.
Instagram itself is not available on the state-censored network in China, but there are Chinese platforms that are also all about showing off photos and videos. This photo-op of a train traveling through the eighth floor of a skyscraper has catapulted Chongqing to the top of the list of popular travel destinations. At the beginning, everyone was standing on the street, heads up and cell phones, two hands up like this, all in the same position.
And then the local government said it was too dangerous to take photos on the street so they built this area for tourists. This is where the best videos are edited for posting on platforms like Douyin, the Chinese parent of the app we know as Tiktok. It is an integral part of life here, acting as a messenger, shopping platform, amusement and travel guide.
The city didn’t used to have so much tourism. And now due to Douyin, many, many people come here. I estimate 3,000, 4,000 every day.
Everyone wants to take a picture. In the past, foreign guests didn’t stay here overnight, they only came on cruises. Chongqing is located on the Jialing and Yangtze rivers – the latter being the country’s most important waterway.
Where the controversial Three Gorges Dam dams up to 600 kilometers of the Yangtze River. Chongqing is a state-designed megacity, created by merging several cities into a special economic zone. Chongqing is hardly recognizable in photos from the past.
That’s how much the city has changed in recent years. The cable cars are one of the few things that have survived though. In operation since 1987, it was built for the locals, and back then it cost 20 cents to cross over to the other riverbank.
Today, hardly any locals travel on it, the line of tourists is too long, and there are now more bridges to get to the other side quickly. One thing has not changed. Then as now, bangbangs are the first thing tourists see when they arrive in Chongqing by boat.
Jili explains the origins of the name. This bamboo pole is a symbol. Bangbang means pole in Chinese.
If someone needs one, we just shout “bangbang”. Then a porter comes immediately, we agree with him how heavy the load is and how far up he should carry it and then pay him. Fan Tuyi has been doing this job for 30 years.
He has been on his feet since five o’clock this morning. I’ve already gone up and down the stairs more than ten times today. Up and down every day.
Morning to evening. For him, every step is a step to survive. Hey, do you need a bangbang, can I help you?
We don’t need one. Life is hard, he says, but he is happy. As long as he manages to earn around 30 euros a day, he’s satisfied.
Fan Tuyi’s children work in a factory. They would like their father to give up the back breaking work, but he wants to continue earning his own money. With his muscles, his bamboo pole and his experience.
As long as there are stairs here, I’ll keep going, I’ll keep working. Only old people do this work now. There are no young people.
There are no 30 or 40-year-olds. Young people just don’t do this job anymore. His profession is dying out.
Bangbangs have been a part of Chongqing for much longer than the megacity’s skyline or modern technology such as self-driving cabs. The hills, the narrow streets, the steps. They have remained even as the city has become a megacity.
The 69-year-old has seen it all. There used to be no bridges. There was no bridge here.
And no high-rise buildings either. Everything has changed. The Raffels building hadn’t been built yet.
Fan Tuyi knew the old headland where the two rivers meet. Today it looks like this. The mega complex with eight towers is Raffles.
The towers are supposed to resemble an oversized sail. Tonight, like every night, the building dominates the skyline. There is a shopping center, offices, hotels and apartments – it’s the tallest residential building in China.
Proud Chongqing residents say it is four times taller than the Empire State Building in New York. Before we can go up, we first have to go down. It’s endless.
We’re meeting up with Goh Huan Tong. Raffles is his baby. When he picks us up, he immediately starts talking.
And he admits that not everyone is enthusiastic. One point of contention is the old city wall. A small section of it has been preserved.
It was a compromise. It was better – to involve the public. Because they were in favor of preserving it.
And that’s what we did. And now it’s still there. But you don’t seem very happy with that.
Yes, I am. I’m happy. I always find something good in the bad.
Like the company behind the mega-building, he also comes from Singapore. He came to Chongqing eleven years ago to work on this project – with high hopes, like many investors. Of course, it’s a megacity.
There are more people living in the city center, than the eight million people that live in Singapore, which is my home country. That’s why we’re here. He takes us upstairs to the most expensive apartment they sell here – for almost 13 million euros.
From here, we look out over the point where the Yangtze and Jialing rivers meet. At times you see two colors: one river is brownish, one is more greenish. Like a yuanyang pot, Chongqing’s mixed hotpot.
Hotpot, there it is again. We want to see it from even higher up. On the Skywalk, in the skyscraper that towers 250 meters above the others.
This is where we have arranged to meet Paipai. This is a tourist attraction in Chongqing, people come to make videos of it. It’s very popular.
Tourists see it on social media videos. They come and want to see the mountain city. We are standing here in the middle of the skyline.
I don’t know what takes my breath away more: The height, the view, or Paipai’s infectious enthusiasm for this city. The locals here say that women are made of water, and women in Chongqing are made of boiling water. Paipai fits into this category.
She sells city trips to Chongqing, so it’s part of her job to think the city is great. I’m young and I want to have fun; Chongqing is a fun city, I want to stay here for a while and then move on to learn more. I like it here, life is comfortable.
When you wake up in the morning to open the windows, it’s often raining outside, and fresh air blows in your face. Exciting! During the day, tourists enjoy the romantic mountain city, and then here comes the excitement.
You’ll never forget this city. 250 meters below, food supplier Li Zicheng has his next order. When things are going well, I do 100 orders a day, that’s for about 10 hours.
Normally it’s more like 40, 50, up to 60. In China, everything is delivered: from fresh chicken feet to bottles of milk. Order around the clock by app and the delivery service will be at your door a few minutes later.
Li Zicheng doesn’t even earn one euro per delivery. He prefers orders from buildings with elevators, but he also likes the more strenuous orders. For me it’s exercise, which I like doing anyway.
Sitting on his scooter is enough of a break for the 28-year-old. For him, his job means freedom – if he wants to work, he turns on the app and works. If not, he simply doesn’t log in.
No comparison to a 12-hour office day. Chongqing may be a megacity, but the people seem more relaxed than in other big cities like Beijing. Almost 2,000 kilometers away from the capital, it also seems a little freer politically – at least on the surface.
There is art here that can be seen as a critique of the surveillance state. In the middle of the tourist district. Li Zicheng started a new life here after working as a soldier for a few years.
He likes his job, but knows that he can only do it at this pace while he’s still young. Freelancing does have its downsides. Compared to other industries, of course I don’t have insurance from my employer, I have to do that myself.
The advantage is that I am freer. The disadvantage is that there are no long-term prospects. There is no limit to how much I can earn, but there is a limit to my future, I can’t do deliveries forever.
His dream is to start his own company one day. He wants to earn his start-up capital here – next to all these steps. Back to sausage vendor Martin.
His livestream is over and he’s hungry. Eating sausage every day is just as impossible as hotpot every day. He takes us to a typical Chongqing noodle shop, open 24 hours a day.
In the kitchen, the experts start a conversation. Is there a rule for stirring pasta? Isn’t there a saying?
Whether the noodles are good or not depends on how you mix them. So, you have to pull the noodles high first and then mix them this way. Ah.
Look, I’m still a foreigner after all. But your Chongqing dialect is really good, you must have lived here for a long time. Eight years or so.
Damn spicy. It’s kind of the spaghetti of China, the spaghetti from Chongqing. Spicy and affordable.
Shen Xun eats the noodles several times a week. The city is a bit too fast paced and the prices are quite high. Apart from Chongqing noodles, everything here is expensive.
The car Shen Xun is driving doesn’t belong to him. That’s why he’s wearing a helmet at the wheel. His job: professional designated driver.
The men with the small folding bicycles belong to the group of people in China who work long hours and don’t necessarily earn much. They want to profit from those who are partying tonight. And there is a lot of partying in Chongqing.
Two or three a. m. , that’s not particularly late here.
In Chongqing, the nightlife lasts all night long. It’s common to stay out until everywhere closes. In China, there is a strict ban on drinking and driving: 0% alcohol.
Anyone who has had something to drink can call a driver like Shen Xun to get home. To be honest, I don’t like working at night. It makes people old quickly and you get skin problems.
But driving drunk people around at night is fun. I get to meet a lot of people. Do you want to film that too?
His cell phone flashes, he has a job. The 23-year-old picks up his inebriated customers directly at the parking lot and drives them home in their own cars. He stows his bike in the trunk for the return journey.
The cars he drives through Chongqing’s streets at night are models he would like to be able to afford himself. That’s why he has two jobs. During the day he works in a restaurant, and for the past few months he has also been driving the partygoers around at night.
Of course I’m tired. Who wants to work two jobs? But to have the life I want, I have to work hard.
Drving the partygoers is just my side job. It’s how I earn my pocket money. While he waits for customers, he keeps a close eye on the cars he’s been working so hard to get for himself.
He is not from Chongqing, but fell in love with the city on his first visit. He doesn’t like visiting his family so much, they only ask if he has a girlfriend, or owns an apartment yet. He finds that exhausting.
I wish I had a normal car and a motorcycle so I could travel around Asia. People in Chongqing are said to be, what else, boiling like hotpot. What sometimes sounds like an argument on the street is simply their loud, enthusiastic nature, says singer Xiao Xian.
She herself has learned to be louder and assert herself here. I like loud music. Many people say my voice is too small and only suitable for pop, but I love rock’n’roll.
I like to scream, to let it all out. We would have liked to show her rock music, but we are not allowed to film the concert with her band. The local authorities find some of the songs too critical for a foreign television audience.
Xiao Xian is undeterred. After her last performance, she takes us to her favorite place. A temple on a hill overlooking the city.
Although she doesn’t really like big cities, she has become accustomed to Chongqing precisely because there are places like this where she can escape the crowds. Rent and the cost of living are cheaper here than in cities like Shanghai or Beijing. That’s another reason why she decided to give her dream a try here.
She is proud that she finally has the courage to stand in front of the crowd. My parents wanted me to become a civil servant, but I didn’t like the idea of having such an old-fashioned job and keeping it for the rest of my life. So I got a tattoo to make it clear to them that I didn’t want a job like that.
In China, tattoos are a taboo for most civil servant positions. While Xiao Xian is driving home, food deliverer Li Zicheng has decided to call it a day. He is exhausted, but that never lasts long.
It is a bit exhausting, but when we get together with a few friends, that feeling just disappears, especially when we have a drink, which relaxes us. And then we’re back at work in a good mood the next day. He is not from Chongqing, but being here is like “coming home”.
The nightlife is really special. The empty streets seen in other big Chinese cities are rare here. In Chongqing you can have fun in the bars, drink or do karaoke until 8 a.
m. and then eat noodles. No matter if it’s day or night.
There are always so many people. When you’re working and you see that there are so many people on the street, you never feel lonely. That’s because this megacity has room for the dreams of his generation.
For young people who shape their futures according to their own wishes and not the way their parents have planned them. While the party is still going on in the bars, the evening is over on hotpot hill. All that’s left of the up to 6,000 guests are the dishes.
In the homes of the mountain city, the party city, the hot city, a new day begins.
