Chongqing, some say is the biggest city in the world. Not sure by what measures - but I suspect by any. They merged some municipalities to produce an "official" city of about 12 million. Most big cities are officially combinations of different urban entities: the Home Counties for London, the nearby counties of New York State like Nassau and of other states like Newark for New York City and the banlieu of Paris. Thus these cities are officially smaller.
But, I suspect that by a reasonable practical definition of a city, Chongqing is still the biggest, i.e. the greatest number of people living in a contiguous urban area.
That, I'll admit, was part of the lure to go there: what is this huge city - is it just an endless drab sprawl of concrete or could it be a new human concept just emerging?
The reality was not as I'd expected it. Not to say I was surprised since few new places are as you expect them, which is part of the appeal of visiting them. In the case of Chongqing, it is the lay of the land. The Yangtze winds madly through this part of its route, carving deep through the landscape yielding a feeling of marooned hilltops crammed ingeniously with buildings. Our hotel's entrance was on its top floor - guests take the elevator down to their rooms beside the river. It made up the lower floors of a modernly architected apartment building, also containing restaurants and beauty salons etc. New expressways run along the edge of the land 5 stories high on stilts. A light railway runs below this level, under bridges and connected to the higher levels by tunnels.
In the midst of it all are historically earlier constructions showing a fading history of this part of china: concrete block residential buildings, each apartment having claimed its balcony areas as living space, enclosing them first with glass and then with metal bars. Paranoia? Hard to tell. It's hard to find the original wooden stilt-houses - they can't survive the building frenzy of the past few years this close to the center of the city - but there are a few remaining jewels like St Joseph's Church found out of the crowd down narrow stair-paths off the bus jammed main roads.
My 4-year-old son, like many boys is amazed by means of transport, so of the 4 days for this trip the first 2 were consumed getting there: a ferry to Nansha near Guangzhou, taxi to Guangzhou South Train Station, fast train to Changsha and overnight to Chongqing. He won't remember much in terms of detail however the subconscious effect should be greatly educating. Certainly he's already unfazed by the unfamiliar. On a practical level, waking early and hurrying followed by waiting in departure areas has become natural for him. While it is gratifying - and a relief - that he and my other children greatly enjoy these trips, a large part of the justification is a further form of subconscious education. I suppose the idea is an extension of my philosophy, vaguely defined as it is, that regardless of culture humans have the same fundamental motivations and thus there's common ground upon which we can nurture peace. Trips like this might cement such ideas in my children's pliable minds before society's bigotries confuse them. That's the hope.
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