CHONGQING CITY

We were here: half a day in October 2018.
Number of days recommended: it is not recommended.
My score: 1/5.

Almost every place I score as 1/5, which in my scale comes to mean “avoid it if you can”, usually receive that score not because they are horrible and / or dangerous, but because they have no point of tourist interest noteworthy, but this is not the case about Chongqing, which is undoubtedly the ugliest and most chaotic city we have visited in China. It should be said that the city that has reminded us most is Manila, an Asian mega-city with a pedestrian shopping street that looks like East Nanjing Road in Shanghai, but that begins to deteriorate barely 300 meters away, with all sizes and mixed styles of buildings, most of them with dirty and very aged facades. The lighting effects of the skyscrapers near the cruise terminal are certainly showy at night, and the one that is being built in the far northeast, just above the terminal, is not modern but directly futuristic, but it will be of little value to improve the look of the city if the streets leading to it are so under construction that you can not walk with a wheeled suitcase, stalls are stacked, poles with dozens of Kathmandu-style light cables, or trucks loaded to the brim by workers without a shirt. Chongqing is a rich and prosperous city that does not look like it.

But it is not only the port of departure or arrival of the famous Three Gorges cruise, but the logical base to explore other points of interest in the province, such as the karst mountains of Wulong or the ancient Dazu Grottoes. We will not have another option if we want to visit these sites, so my recommendation: look for a nice hotel well connected by train and metro away from the center and do not peek through, skip the visit to the capital.