Old Chongqing | Chongqing is probably the biggest city you'll ever visit.The municipality has 32 million inhabitants, four times the number of Switzerland. And it grows. It sits on a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialin river. Chongqing’s large river harbor is also the starting point for cruises to the Three Gorges Dam. Once Chongqing was a city of hills, small winding roads and stairs. Now it is as expanded into a distinctly modern metropolis, with skyscrapers, large avenues, all the shopping centers you could wish for, innumerable restaurants - the typical ones offering the city's famous spicy 'hot pot' - an international airport, trains, subways and skytrains and a busy system of freeways surrounding it. But, if you look for them, Chongqing still has those narrow winding roads and stairs, many of them featured in this slide show. With some parts of the city therefore closed to motorized transport, porters carrying their loads on a bamboo stick on their shoulder are ubiquitous: the 'stick men'.They (together with a few porter women) are said to number 10'000.
Visits to Chongqing : I was in Chongqing briefly in 2008 and for a longer period, one entire month, in 2010. At that time, the main purpose of the trip as to shoot pictures for the Focale Photo Exhibition 2010. The selection presented here is more general and focuses on hilly old part of the town and its steep stairs. Like the Beijing hutongs, many of these areas are likely to become designated for redevelopment. It's probably only the inconvenient location of some of these neighborhoods, accessible by stairs only, that has deterred the developers. For now...