Chongqing: a city built on cliffs, fog and chilli oil

Chongqing does not obey the usual rules of a city. It is stacked onto a rocky peninsula where the **Jialing meets the Yangtze**, so streets run over rooftops, one building's ground floor is another's eighth, and the **Liziba** monorail famously enters a residential tower on one side and comes out the other without anybody having to move house. Fog sits in the river gorges for much of the winter and the whole place glows through it. The postcard is **Hongyadong**, a warren of stilted timber balconies stacked up the cliff above the water, lit gold after dark until it looks like a frame from an animated film. Cross on the **Yangtze cable car** for the version of that view nobody photographs, then ride the Kuixinglou escalator or one of the old funiculars to understand how residents actually get up and down. **Ciqikou**, the porcelain-shipping town on the Jialing, keeps the pre-boom texture: flagstones, teahouses, sticky rice cakes and the clatter of mahjong. Eat with courage. Chongqing claims to have invented **hotpot**, and its version is the fiercest in the country — a slick red cauldron of beef tallow, dried chillies and Sichuan pepper that river porters once cooked cheap offal in. The xiaomian noodles served for breakfast are nearly as blunt. The city is also the standard embarkation point for **Three Gorges** cruises heading downriver toward the dam, and the Chaotianmen docks are a fine place to stand at night and watch container ships slide past the towers.