The first fact about Yuelai is geological. The ground here is rare large flat land in the hilly country of eastern Sichuan and western Hunan, one of the few broad level sheets in a region of ridges and valleys, which is why the planned control area of Liangjiang New Area could be set at 1,200 square kilometres, with 150-odd built up and about 400 available for development. The new area was approved by the State Council on 5 May 2010 and inaugurated on 18 June that year, and on 6 November 2025 it formally became a district of Chongqing. Yuelai is one of its subdistricts.
From the journal
Yuelai: flat ground and an expo line
How a rare sheet of level land north of the rivers became an exhibition district with a metro branch of its own.
In the same city · Liangjiang New Area ↗Rare flat land
The line named for a hall
The metro came early, and it came with a name that explains the place. The Guobo line's Lijia to Yuelai section opened for trial passenger service on 15 May 2013, and work on the second phase, from Yuelai to Shaheba, began on 28 October 2016. Guobo is the usual short form for an international exhibition centre, and the branch was built to carry visitors to one. The station names along the line are therefore a map of the district's purpose: an exposition ground at the end of a branch, with the city's fast line feeding people into it and out again.
An art school signs on
In November 2018 the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute signed its International Design College into the Yuelai area of Liangjiang New Area, which put a design faculty on the same flat ground as the exhibition halls. That is the pattern of the place: institutions arrive by signature and by line extension rather than by slow accretion. A 2010 new area became a 2025 district with 31 subdistricts and 11 towns, and Yuelai's own name now appears on the district's list of subdistricts. The ground was level, and the city used it for the things a level site makes possible.