When we think about big cities, megalopolises such as New York, Hong Kong, Mexico City or Tokyo immediately come to mind. However, the city is hidden, almost unknown to the great world, despite the fact that at present it is the largest city on the planet.
The fastest growing city
The bustling Chongqing is the largest city on the planet. Its area is 82,000 km, and the population is more than 30 million people. One of China's six national central cities, Chongqing has a significant history and culture and serves as an important economic, industrial and transportation hub.📷The city lies deep in China, next to the Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia. Some data indicate that it is the fastest growing city in the world. And this process is very difficult, because Chongqing, which is known here as the “foggy city” or “mountain city”, is actually built between the mountains in a complex hollow left by the Yangtze and Jialing waters, creating narrow streets and roads that are steep and very windy. Extreme temperatures range from 3 C to 44 C.
The city is a transport chaos, because roads intersect at different levels, forming loops up to 360. It is amazing to see that hundreds of houses are almost equal to each other, with heights from 40 to 60 floors.
Some of these tall buildings have several entrance doors, one of which, as usual, is lower, but may be different or several at different heights, depending on the level of the slopes that surround them.People of Chongqing, build tunnels through the mountains, build bridges and complex elevated passages. They compete with mountains and rivers and live in them. In addition, they have very hot summers and cold and wet winters with constant fog at any time of the year. And despite all this, they seem happy. They are friendlier than other Chinese, and despite the speed with which the city moves, life here is slow and quiet.📷
Note! Another of his “entertainments” is food, because the city is a record in the number of restaurants per inhabitant. In addition, there are thousands of stalls that offer food on the street for a few yuan.
There are specialties for every taste:chicken legs and combs; balut; egg with the fruit inside; grasshoppers, spiders and other fried insects; shrimp; pork brains and scorpions.There is a restaurant that offers the penis and testicles of various animals as a star dish.📷
Old and modern
As in all Chinese cities, there is a very big contrast between the old and the modern. While the steep and labyrinthine streets of Chongqing are constantly littered with thousands of expensive cars, hundreds of “bang bang” (nickname porters with a naked torso) are grouped at the gates of markets and stations. They carry goods with bamboo sticks or directly in their hands.The modern part of the city is shown on the banks of the Yangtze and Jialing and is especially beautiful at night, when the fog dissipates and the buildings are lit up like a giant advertising screen.📷The Chongqing Zoo has more than 200 species of animals and 1000 birds, including yaks, argali, a tiger in southern China, a golden cat, a cloud leopard and an Asian elephant. But, without a doubt, the main characters are a dozen pandas. Pandas are endangered, and China plans to open the country's first national park of these animals in the near future, which will contain about 8,000 different species of animals.The city has numerous sources of mineral water, as well as deposits of coal, natural gas, aluminum, strontium, marble and mercury. Between sectors of the municipality, special attention is paid to engineering, chemistry, petrochemicals and metallurgy. There are numerous family farms.📷The main types of products are:cereals, oranges, tobacco and tangerines.This is an important breeding center for silkworms.The metro system that serves citizens has been in operation since 2005. It consists of 55 stations.The city was recently called the "Chicago Yangtze", like Chicago, it also has a silent monorail that allows it to cross skyscrapers without disturbing its inhabitants and also a lot of water, since Chicago is washed by two mighty rivers.