Dazu District
Dazu Rock Carvings
The Baoding cliff, where Song and Yuan figures fill half a kilometre of open rock face.
A municipality read from its two rivers
Chongqing.
The city between the rivers, and the country around it
Chongqing is a municipality the size of a small country, and most of it is not the city. Two rivers meet on a rock peninsula and the streets climb it as stairs. North of that rise the Daba mountains; south lie the limestone of Wulong and the Tujia counties; east run the Three Gorges and the county seats the reservoir moved. Read outward from the water.
Chaotianmen
Everything here follows from the junction at Chaotianmen, where the Jialing joins the Yangtze and the water changes colour. Start on the steps above the confluence, then follow the river east into the gorges and west onto the plain.
Explore this placeBegin with the classics
Three places open the three landscapes beyond the city.
Fengjie
Baidicheng
The fortified hill at the mouth of the Qutang Gorge, named for a white dragon, walled by the Southern Song and turned into an island by the reservoir.
Look a little closer
Follow a migration, a drowned archive of river levels, and a dragon made of bamboo and paper.
From the journal
The guild house of the migrants
The Qing hall where merchants from Huguang and Guangdong kept their gods, their business and their hold on the city.
From the journal
A thousand years of water levels cut into a river shoal
How a natural stone ridge in the Fuling reach of the Yangtze became a hydrological record, and how it came to be sealed inside a glass-walled shell under the reservoir.
The dragon is a constructed object with a calendar inside it, and the craft that makes it is now listed alongside the dance.
Keep exploring
Choose a city: start with its highlights or continue reading in the full article collection.
Dazu District
The district west of Chongqing whose hillsides carry the Dazu Rock Carvings.
All articlesTongnan District
The north-western district of Chongqing, built around the Fu river, a gilt Buddha and two river towns.
All articlesFuling
The district where the Wu River meets the Yangtze, with the Baihelian stone inscriptions sealed under the reservoir.
All articlesChangshou
A Yangtze district of chemical industry and a man-made lake, eighty kilometres downstream of downtown Chongqing.
All articlesHechuan
Three rivers meet here, and above the confluence a fortress held out against the Mongols for thirty-six years.
All articlesRongchang
The westernmost district of Chongqing, known for its pigs, its pottery and the hemp of the plain.
All articlesKaizhou District
The north-eastern district where the Xiao River backs up into the Three Gorges reservoir, and where a lake was built over the drawdown zone.
All articlesChengkou County
Chongqing's northernmost county, set on the southern foot of the Daba Mountains against the Shaanxi border.
All articlesLiangping District
The plain district under Gaoliang Mountain, known for bamboo blinds, New Year prints and a Chan temple.
All articlesDianjiang County
The county in the middle of Chongqing that calls itself the home of the national-flower peony.
All articlesBanan District
The district south of the Yangtze, once Ba County, with the wartime sites at Nanquan and the river towns of Mudong and Fengsheng.
All articlesWanzhou District
The great river port of the Three Gorges reservoir, half of whose old town was moved when the water rose.
All articlesLiangjiang New Area
The riverfront at Jiangbeizui and the old town of Longxing open two views of Liangjiang New Area.
All articlesFengjie
The county at the head of the Qutang Gorge, a poetry county that moved 128,000 people for the reservoir and grows navel oranges above the water.
All articlesYunyang
A reservoir county that moved its seat further than any other, and now looks across the water at a temple it also moved.
All articlesWushan
Chongqing's easternmost county, straddling the Wu Gorge where the Daning River comes in.
All articlesWuxi
The upper Daning county under the Daba Mountains, with a salt town, cliff coffins and a cold plateau in the north-west.
All articlesFengdu
The county whose hill of underworld temples gave it a second name, and whose old seat now lies under the reservoir.
All articlesZhong County
The loyalty county, with a timber tower on a river rock and the last basket ferry on this stretch of the Yangtze.
All articlesJiangjin
The district at the tail of the reservoir, named for a key ford, with old towns, a marshal's birthplace and a sorghum trade.
All articlesYuzhong District
The peninsula between the Jialing and the Yangtze, where the city began and where its stairs, gates, guild houses and monument still stand.
All articlesNan'an District
The south bank, where the Yangtze bends around the old wharves at Longmenhao and the road climbs to the wartime villas.
All articlesDadukou District
The steel district on the south-west bank, cut out of Jiulongpo in 1965 and named after a free ferry.
All articlesShapingba District
The wartime capital's university and arsenal district on the west bank of the Jialing, where the Shaci culture area grew up around the people and plants that arrived after 1937.
All articlesJiulongpo District
The heavy-industrial district split by the Zhongliang ridge, with the fine arts college at Huangjueping on the water and the old post-road towns in its west.
All articlesQijiang
The southern district of limestone, coal and a salt road, with a county town first set up in 619 still standing in its hills.
All articlesBeibei
In Beibei, the Jialing River connects memories of Lu Zuofu and the wartime city.
All articlesWulong
The karst district on the lower Wu River, where three limestone spans, a river cave and a grassland plateau sit inside one World Heritage listing.
All articlesYongchuan
The western district of bamboo forest and river wharves, named for three rivers meeting in the shape of a written character.
All articlesTongliang
The district of the bamboo-framed dragon, with a county town that was dissolved into a neighbour and later came back.
All articlesBishan
The small western district that rebuilt its connections to Chongqing with a metro line, a high-speed railway and a driverless rubber-tyred train.
All articlesQianjiang District
The old autonomous county at the south-eastern corner of Chongqing, where the Wuling mountains meet Hubei.
All articlesXiushan Tujia and Miao Autonomous County
Chongqing's southernmost county, at the corner where four provinces meet and the Miao country begins.
All articlesYouyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County
The largest county in Chongqing, between the Wu River and the Youshui, with the Peach Blossom Spring and two river towns.
All articlesPengshui Miao and Tujia Autonomous County
The Miao-majority county on the lower Wu River, in a valley its own geographers call two mountains and one trough.
All articlesShizhu Tujia Autonomous County
The Tujia county on the south bank of the Yangtze, with a river port, a cold forest and a crop of bitter root.
All articlesNanchuan District
The district south of the city where the Dalou range ends in a karst table mountain, a bamboo crop and a high forest park.
All articlesPhoto credits and rights
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Dazu Rock CarvingsTruthven / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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BaidichengUser:唐戈(User:Gisling) / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗