What to See in Chongqing - Top Sights and Attractions

The Qutang Gorge is the shortest of China's Three Gorges. Immediately downstream of the ancient village Baidicheng the Yangtze River passes between the Chijia Mountain on the north and the Baiyan Mountain on the south. The point where the river passes between these mountains is called the Kuimen Gate and it is the entrance to the Qutang Gorge - the first of the three Yangtze gorges. The Qutang Gorge is only 8 kilometres long, but it is also the narrowest of the Three Gorges. The widest point measures only 150 metres wide. The mountains on either side reach as high as 1,200 metres. This combination of narrow canyons among high mountains with several switchbacks in only 8 kilometres creates spectacular vistas, and the Qutang Gorge is often considered the most beautiful of all the Three Gorges.

The gorge is part of Fengjie County of the Chongqing Municipality.^[1]

Museum in Chongqing, China. The Three Gorges Museum is a museum in the Yuzhong District of Chongqing, about the Three Gorges and Chongqing. It is one of the largest museums in the country.

The museum opened in 2005, replacing the former Chongqing Museum. It is located near the Chongqing People's Hall. It aims to undertake education, preservation, and scientific research with respect to cultural heritage and the natural environment in Chongqing and the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River.

The exterior of the museum has sloping walls and is topped by a large glass dome. There are bronze sculptures, large reliefs, and 1-km (1,094 yards) long "Ecological Corridor".

The museum covers an area of 42,497 m2 (c. 50,828 square yards). The exhibition hall covers 23,225 m2 (c. 27,778 square yards). There are four main displays:

Further displays include:

• Painting and calligraphy
• Porcelain
• Coins
• Sculpture from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE –220 CE)
• Folk customs of southwest China
• Cultural objects given by Li Chuli

Another major exhibit is a 180° panorama of wartime Chongqing when it was the provisional capital of Free China and was subjected to Japanese bombardment. There is also a 360° cinema showing the natural and social scenery of the Three Gorges before the dam was constructed. A 1st-floor exhibition on the Three Gorges includes a model of the Three Gorges Dam.^[2]

Amusement park in Chongqing, China. Foreigners' Street or Yangren Jie was an amusement park and entertainment area in Chongqing, China. It combined various styles of architecture, food, and attractions from around the world. It was northwest of Jiefangbei on the other side of the Yangtze River. As part of an urban development plan and upon expiration of land lease, the Yangren Jie was ordered to close and vacate starting on March 1, 2019. It was planned to be relocated to Fuling district, Chongqing.

The theme park was established in 2006 and covers 3.5 km2. Initially the site was seen as a European-style pedestrian street. The park includes recreations of well-known landmarks such as a 10-meter Christ the Redeemer statue from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and a 150-meter section of the Great Wall of China. The site is open 24 hours a day, with free entry, and has been described as "overly kitschy".

Foreigners have been encouraged to set up shops, hence the name. Buildings include a church, an upside-down house, and the world's largest public toilet (the "Porcelain Palace"). Foreigners' Street is located near Danzishi in the Nan'an District of Chongqing. The attraction was initiated by the manager of Meixin Group. It covers an area of over two square kilometers.

The Love Land sex theme park attraction would have been near Foreigners' Street. This was due to be opened in 2009, but was demolished by the Chinese authorities before it actually opened. The Porcelain Palace was itself purged of artworks and facilities seen as vulgar by the authorities. Signs for Love Land in Foreigners' Street were removed by the authorities.

Laowai Street in Shanghai literally means "Foreigner's Street".^[4]

Hall in Chongqing, China. The Great Hall of the People, also translated as the Chongqing People's Auditorium, located in central Chongqing, China, is a large hall for political meetings and cultural events. The hall is located in Yuzhong District, and serves as one of the architectural symbols of Chongqing. The exterior resembles the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

Construction of the hall began in June 1951 and completed in April 1954, with the involvement of Deng Xiaoping, who was the first secretary of the Communist Party's Southwest Bureau (西南局) at the time. The building includes a large auditorium and three adjoining parts to the east, south, and north. It covers a total area of 66,000 m2. The auditorium covers 18,500 m2. The building is 65 meters high. The circular domed auditorium is 55 meters high and its internal diameter is 46.33 meters. The auditorium is encircled by five storeys of additional viewing areas and has a seating capacity of 4,200 people. The building is symmetric, with colonnades and wings.

The building can be viewed from the People's Square below. Opposite is the Three Gorges Museum. It is currently the meeting place of the municipal legislative bodies – the Chongqing Municipal People's Congress (Renda) and People's Political Consultative Conference (Zhengxie).^[6]

The Dazu Rock Carvings are a series of Chinese religious sculptures and carvings and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Dazu District, Chongqing, China. The carvings date back as far as the 7th century AD, depicting and influenced by Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Some are in rock-cut cave shrines, in the usual Chinese Buddhist style, but many others are rock reliefs carved into the open rock faces. Listed as a World Heritage Site in 1999, the Dazu Rock Carvings are made up of 75 protected sites containing some 50,000 statues, with over 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs. The sites are located in Chongqing Municipality within the steep hillsides throughout Dazu District, located about 165 kilometers west of the urban area of Chongqing. The highlights of the rock grotto are found on Mount Baoding and Mount Beishan.^[8]

Museum in Chongqing, China. The Baiheliang Underwater Museum or "White Crane Ridge Underwater Museum" is an underwater museum built around the White Crane Ridge of Fuling District, Chongqing. It is China's first underwater museum.

The museum is located on the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges area, near the Three Gorges Dam; it opened on May 18, 2009. The construction of the museum began in 2002 and has cost around US$28 million. The main architect was Ge Xiurun of the Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Baiheliang (literally meaning the "White Crane Ridge") is an archeological site in northern Fuling District that has since been submerged underwater due to the building of the Three Gorges Dam. The museum displays centuries-old inscriptions recording changes in the water level of the Yangtze River for around 1,200 years. The site consists of a stone ridge that is 1,600 meters by 15 meters in size. It is now submerged under 43 meters of water.

Before the Three Gorges Dam was built, the rock ridge was only submerged during the summer and fall. Every 3–5 years, when the water level of the Yangtze dropped during the winter, the ridge and the carvings on it were exposed and visible. The stone fish figures and inscriptions recording water-levels and other information from the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) onwards could be viewed by visitors. The carvings include 18 fish carvings, poems written calligraphically, three Bodhisattva carvings, and a crane.

From 1994, China's government departments involved with the protection of Chinese cultural heritage undertook research on the conservation of the stone inscriptions at Baiheliang. After a number of proposals, it was decided to make the site into an underwater museum.

The stone ridge has now been enclosed in an arch-shaped glass covering that is filled with purified water to ensure that pressure on both sides of the arch is the same. Two underwater channels with long escalators have been installed from the riverbank, allowing museum visitors to descend and view the stone carvings and inscriptions.

Some carvings from White Crane Ridge are also on display in the Three Gorges Museum in the city center of Chongqing.^[17]

Wu Gorge, sometimes called Great Gorge, is the second gorge of the Three Gorges system on the Yangtze River, People's Republic of China. Formed by the Wu River, it stretches 45 km from Wushan to Guandukou, and is located downstream of Qutang Gorge and upstream of Xiling Gorge. The gorge straddles the boundary between Wushan County of Chongqing Municipality and Badong County, Hubei Province.

The Gorge has been known as the Wu Gorge since at least the Three Kingdoms Period, when it was recorded in the geographical treatise Shui Jing Zhu. In 589 AD, General Lü Zhongsu of the Chen Dynasty stationed troops in the Wu and Xiling Gorges in an attempt to stop the advancing Sui Dynasty armies. Tang Dynasty poet Yang Jiong wrote a classical poem entitled "Passing Wu Gorge" (Chinese: 過巫峽).

The mountains on both sides of the Yangtze, through which the river cuts the Wu Gorge, are known as the Wu Mountains (巫山, Wū Shān).^[20]

Tourist attraction in Chongqing, China. Fengdu Ghost City is a large complex of shrines, temples and monasteries dedicated to the afterlife located on the Ming mountain, in Fengdu County, Chongqing municipality, China. It is situated about 170 kilometres downstream from Chongqing on the north bank of the Yangtze River.

The city consists of buildings, structures, dioramas, and statues related to Diyu and Naraka, concepts from Chinese mythology and Buddhism that signify the underworld or hell. It is modeled to resemble Youdu, the capital of Diyu.

After the building of the Three Gorges Dam and the rising of the water level of the river it became separated from the city of Fengdu, which was rebuilt higher up the mountainside on the south side of the river.

In recent years, Fengdu Ghost City has become a tourist attraction. Cruise boats carrying tourists up or down the river stop at the docks and tourists are taken in vehicles halfway up the mountain. From there, there is an open-air escalator up to the complex or the visitor can climb up on foot.

The site's history goes back nearly two thousand years, at least in legends. It focuses on the afterlife and combines the beliefs of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. It is mentioned in several classic Chinese works of literature like Journey to the West, Investiture of the Gods and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.

According to legend, Fengdu got its name of Ghost City during the Eastern Han dynasty, when two imperial officials, Yin Changsheng and Wang Fangping, came to Ming Mountain to practice Taoism and in the process became immortals. The combination of their names, Yinwang, means "King of Hell" and that was the beginning of the site's focus on the underworld. Many of the temples and shrines show paintings and sculptures of people being tortured for their sins.

According to Chinese beliefs, the dead must pass three tests before passing to the next life. First they must pass the "Bridge of Helplessness". This stone bridge was built during the Ming dynasty and is a test for Good and Evil. It has three arches and only the middle one is used for testing people. There are different protocols for crossing the bridge depending on sex, age, marital status. At the bridge, demons allow or forbid passage. The good are allowed to pass while the evil will be pushed to the water below. This is now done as a tourist attraction and performers characterised as demons momentarily stop tourists on the bridge but finally allow them across.

Then the dead must proceed to Ghost-Torturing Pass where they present themselves for judgment before Yanluo Wang. This is the second test. In this area there are large sculptures of demons.

The third test is done at the entrance to Tianzi Palace where the dead must stand on a certain stone on one foot for three minutes. According to legend a virtuous person will be able to do it while an evil person will fail and be condemned to hell.

Tianzi Palace is the largest and oldest building and it is three hundred years old.

A more recent addition is the Last Glance to Home Tower which was built in 1985 and is placed where according to legend the dead could have one last look towards their home and families.^[26]

Attraction in Enshi City, China. Tenglong Cave is a cave located 6.8 km from Lichuan City, Hubei, China. It is believed to be the longest monomer karst cave system in the world. The cave entrance is 74 m and 64 m wide, leading to 59.8 km of passageways. An underground network of streams runs for 16.8 km whilst the cave is the source of the Qingjiang River. Year round temperatures underground remain in the 16–18 degrees Celsius range.

To facilitate tourist access to the cave, as well as to the so-called Enshi Grand Canyon Scenic Area, the prefectural authorities are considering plans for the construction of a tourist railway, which will link these two popular tourist attractions with a station on the Yichang−Wanzhou Railway.^[30]

Suspension bridge in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, China. The Aizhai Bridge is a suspension bridge on the G65 Baotou–Maoming Expressway near Jishou, Hunan, China. The bridge was built as part of an expressway from southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to Changsha.

The bridge is famous for the spectacular view it offers those crossing it.

With a main span of 1,146 metres (3,760 ft) and a deck height of 336 metres (1,102 ft), as of 2013, it is the thirteenth-highest bridge in the world and the world's nineteenth-longest suspension bridge. Of the world's 400 or so highest bridges, none has a main span as long as Aizhai. It is also the world's highest and longest tunnel-to-tunnel bridge. The bridge contains 1888 lights to increase visibility at night.

Construction on the Aizhai Bridge began in October 2007 and was completed by the end of 2011, ahead of schedule. The bridge was temporarily opened to pedestrians during the 2012 Spring Festival and was formally opened to traffic in March 2012.

The bridge was built with the assistance of a $208 million loan from the Asian Development Bank; the total project cost was $610 million, which included 64 kilometres (40 mi) of expressway construction (two thirds of which comprised bridge and tunnel) and upgrades to 129 kilometres (80 mi) of local roads. The bridge and the associated road construction were projected to reduce the travel time between Jishou and Chadong from 4 hours to less than 1 hour.

In September 2012, the Aizhai Bridge was the site of an international BASE jumping festival that included more than 40 jumpers from 13 countries.^[32]

Municipality in China. Yuzhong District is the central district and heart of Chongqing municipality. It is the capital of the municipality and is also the political, economical, and entertainment center of the city of Chongqing. Located in the central portion of Yuzhong is the Jiefangbei CBD, a leading business and financial center of western China.

Surrounded on three sides by water, Yuzhong is effectively a peninsula between the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers. Due to the limited space, its hilly nature, and the fact that it is the main central business district for Chongqing, Yuzhong contains some of the tallest skyscrapers in China and is the most densely populated district in the municipality.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the relocated headquarters of the Nationalist Government were located in Yuzhong.^[33]

Municipality in China. Wanzhou District is Chongqing's second most populated urban core area on the upper reaches of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River in China. It is currently governed as a district of Chongqing Municipality, bordering Sichuan to the northwest and Hubei to the southeast. It was formerly known as Wanxian or Wan County. Prior to Chongqing's formation as a direct-controlled municipality, Wanzhou was part of Sichuan province. The urban core of Wanzhou is 228 km away from Chongqing's city proper.

"Wanzhou" literally means "myriad-prefecture", where "a myriad rivers converge and a myriad traders gather" (万川毕汇、万商云集). Due to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, 47% of Wanzhou's old urban area was submerged and had to be relocated.^[35]