Chongqing Audio Guide

Chapter 1 · The Invincible Army's First Defeat

Huguo Gate is built into a hillside, backed by a cliff and facing the Jialing River. In ancient times, there were no stone steps; the only outside route was a removable wooden plank path. Huguo Gate is one of Diaoyu Fortress's eight key passes. The fortress covers only 2.5 square kilometers but could hold more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians. It was the core of the Southern Song's mountain defense system built specifically to neutralize Mongol cavalry. The town is ringed by three rivers, forming a natural water barrier with only one narrow road to the outside. When the rivers rose in the rainy season, the mountain town became an island, completely canceling the Mongol cavalry's advantage on open plains. In 1259, Möngke Khan, the Great Khan of the Mongols, had swept across Eurasia almost undefeated. He personally led an invasion of Sichuan, aiming to destroy the Song and unify East Asia. His strategic goal was clear: take Sichuan quickly, control the upper Yangtze waterway, push east, and wipe out the Southern Song regime to complete the unification of East Asia. The Mongols had long used a brutal pattern of demanding surrender and massacring cities as a warning, so most cities surrendered without a fight. After arriving at the city walls, Möngke sent envoys to demand surrender. The defending soldiers executed them on the spot, cutting off any possibility of negotiation. By then Diaoyu Fortress had already held out for more than ten years. Its commander Wang Jian had gathered soldiers and civilians to strengthen defenses and stockpile supplies, preparing for a long war. Reinforcements from the Southern Song were blocked and could not arrive, so this isolated city faced the main Mongol army at its height alone. From February to July, Möngke personally directed repeated attacks at enormous cost in troops, but the mountain fortress remained unbroken.

Chapter 1 · Why Was the City Built Here?

Jiaochangkou City Balcony, also known as the Jiaochang Viewpoint, is the highest point of Shibati. From here, the commercial districts of the Upper City and the dense lanes of the Lower City show the terrain that shaped old Chongqing. Today the Yuzhong Peninsula is a modern city of high-rises, but if you strip away all the modern buildings, it is essentially just a narrow, steep ridge. Many people wonder: ancient city builders preferred flat land, so why would anyone choose to settle on steep slopes? In fact, this was not a preference. It was a calculated trade-off. The Yuzhong Peninsula sits where the Yangtze and Jialing rivers meet. In ancient times, these waterways were the region's most important transport routes, supporting centuries of trade and the movement of people. At the same time, the steep cliffs along both sides of the peninsula formed a natural barrier. Without building massive walls, the city could use the terrain to defend itself. Its security advantage was exceptional. From the moment this city was born, it involved a trade-off. It gained convenient water transport and natural defenses, but it paid the price of having almost no large flat land, so it had to survive on steep slopes and ridges. The earliest city, Jiangzhou, was built by the water and grew up around its docks. As the population kept growing, the old riverside settlement became overcrowded, and the city had no choice but to spread upward along the ridge. Over time, the gentler high ground along the ridge became the Upper City, crowded with government offices and merchant houses. The low-lying land by the river became the Lower City, packed with docks and dense housing. This two-level pattern of Upper City and Lower City took shape. A vertical drop of dozens of meters split the city space, and Shibati, carved into the hillside, became the only central corridor linking the two halves, connecting the commercial center with everyday life. The neighborhood we see now is, in essence, the inevitable result of a decision about where to build the city made two thousand years ago. From the very beginning, this mountain city grew by adapting to the steep terrain.

Chapter 1 · An Adventure No One Believed In

Hongya Cave is Chongqing's most recognizable urban landmark. It is widely seen as the symbol of the city's 8D magical mountain image. But few people know that this hugely popular attraction was questioned from the very beginning. For a long time, industry insiders, designers, and local merchants firmly believed it was a building that had been built wrong. The story begins with the 2002 tender for the old-city renovation of Hongya Cave. The bidders were all well-established local real estate companies in Chongqing. They had experienced design teams, extensive construction records, and complete commercial operations, and were regarded across the industry as the safe choice. No one expected that the project would ultimately go to a complete outsider: He Yongzhi, an entrepreneur. She had built her career with the Little Swan Hotpot business and had deep roots in the restaurant industry, but she had never been involved in real estate development, historic building renovation, or urban block construction. She was a total outsider. In everyone's eyes, this looked like an attempt that could not possibly succeed. Hongya Cave sits on a riverside cliff in one of the most topographically complex and construction-challenging areas of Chongqing. Building on such mountainous terrain was extremely risky, and renovating old neighborhoods required balancing heritage preservation with commercial survival, a challenge the industry recognized as extremely difficult. So from the moment she won the bid, the doubts never stopped. The whole industry watched and assumed this cross-industry outsider's renovation attempt would end in failure.

Chapter 1 · An Unsolvable Dilemma

Many people see the monorail pass through the Liziba building and are stunned, then immediately puzzled: which came first, the building or the track? It may look designed for internet attention, but it grew out of a difficult urban-planning dilemma that Chongqing had to solve. In 1998, planning began for Chongqing Rail Transit Line 2, a core commuter line through the city center. Routing it along the river was the best option. But Liziba's terrain is highly unusual: it fronts the Jialing River and is backed by hills, and the entire riverfront was already packed, leaving almost no open space. Because of terrain, track curvature, and train safety requirements, the Liziba station site on Line 2 was completely locked in. It could not be shifted by even a fraction. The awkward catch was that this ideal and only possible station site had already been planned for a 19-story residential building. In any other city, this would have been a simple either-or choice: change the route or move the building. It would have been a standard, safe solution. But in the mountain city of Chongqing, the problem had no easy answer. Changing the rail alignment would scrap the entire Line 2 layout, its gradients, curvature, and future network planning, causing costs to soar and delays. Moving the residential building would waste scarce riverfront land and trigger a chain of unresolved problems, from resident resettlement to land-use planning. Both options were difficult, and there was no way back. In the end, the planning team made a bold and unconventional decision: move neither the building nor the track. They squeezed the residential tower and the rail line into the same space. When the news came out, the industry was full of doubt. Many found it unthinkable: a train passing through a residential building would face potentially fatal risks in safety, noise, and fire prevention. Designers now faced a cross-boundary coexistence challenge with no precedent in China.

Chapter 1 · The Youngest Prisoner

Bai Mansion was originally a private villa. In the 1930s, the Nationalists' military intelligence service took it over and turned it into a secret prison. Looking around, you can still see the barbed wire on the walls, guard towers at the corners, and high windows set with thick iron bars. Sunlight barely reached the cells through all those barriers, and the whole compound sat in a somber gloom. The story starts in 1941. By then, the War of Resistance against Japan had entered its fifth year. Much of the country lay in ruins, and ordinary people were uprooted by the fighting. They hoped only for the gunfire to end so they could return to their fields and eat a quiet meal. Still, in that national crisis, the Nationalist government continued to persecute progressive revolutionaries, and many were thrown into prison. In Xi'an, there was a young revolutionary couple. The husband did civilian work in the army and ran a newspaper promoting progressive ideas. His wife worked alongside him in the revolutionary cause. Their son had just been born and was still an infant. Because their revolutionary activities went against the Nationalist authorities, the couple was arrested by the secret police. The baby was only eight months old. The mother could not bear to leave him alone outside, so she carried him in her arms into the prison cell. That child later became known across China as “Little Radish Head.” His real name was Song Zhenzhong. “Little Radish Head” was the nickname fellow prisoners gave him. Years of prison life left him severely malnourished. His head looked unusually large while his body stayed thin and frail. A skinny neck supported that round head, making him look something like a small radish. The other prisoners called him by that name out of sympathy. From the age of eight months, the cell was his whole world. He never saw busy streets crowded with traffic, never knew how tall a towering tree could grow, and never saw a bicycle pass with its bell ringing. All he could see were iron bars, high walls, and guards pacing back and forth in the corridor.

Chapter 1 · Underground Fortress

At the south gate of Longtousi Park, many visitors stop and stare at the cave openings. Rows of wide, deep caves are carved into the hillside, quiet and full of atmosphere. Half a century ago, these caves were a secret underground arms factory built for war. In the 1960s and 1970s, industrial cities across China were on high alert. Chongqing Chang'an Arsenal, a core military production base, drew up an extremely cautious plan to protect its critical manufacturing capacity. The plan called for two lines of defense: the surface factory would keep operating normally, while workers secretly dug a backup factory inside the mountain. If a sudden crisis forced the surface production line to stop, the mountain factory could keep running and keep the city's industrial lifeline intact. At the time, there was no large machinery. More than 500 workers dug everything by hand, working day and night for over five years. They expanded natural caves into 18 caverns and 12 interconnecting tunnels. The two main tunnels cut all the way through the mountain, linking Hongtudi and Jiujie and forming a massive, solid, multi-level underground complex with routes leading in every direction. In that special era, this cave network was Chongqing's security fallback. Above ground was its known military production capacity; inside the mountain was a hidden backup line. The dual arrangement was built for the worst-case scenario, reinforcing the city's shield. But the war that everyone prepared for never came. After years of painstaking work, the underground city built for war lay quietly dormant beneath the mountain, waiting for a new role in peacetime.

Chapter 1 · The Origins of Chongqing Hot Pot

Chongqing hot pot began as a simple hot meal for laborers at Chaotianmen Wharf. The riverside path here traces how it spread from that rough start. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Chaotianmen stood where the Yangtze and Jialing rivers meet. Merchant boats unloaded here, making it Chongqing's busiest dock. Slaughterhouses along the shore sent the good meat into the city to sell, while offal like tripe and intestines was nearly worthless and often thrown into the river. The wharf was full of boat trackers, porters, and dockhands. They hauled heavy loads up and down steep slopes all day, earned very little, and could not afford proper meat. The riverbanks were damp and foggy year-round, and the cold river wind chilled them. The offal carried down the river became their only affordable meat. Workers gathered a few stones, built a simple stove on the spot, scooped in river water, added chili, Sichuan pepper, and coarse salt, and boiled the scraps together. The chili drove out the cold, and the hot food eased their fatigue. That rough pot by the river was the earliest form of Chongqing hot pot. Early hot pot was not refined; it was just food to fill laborers' stomachs. Later, peddlers saw a business and sold it from shoulder poles as a fixed set of eight beef offal items called the Water Eight Pieces. They carried stoves through the lanes around the docks. There were no proper bowls or chopsticks and no fussy presentation. A bubbling pot of spicy, numbing broth was the most down-to-earth meal on the old Chaotianmen waterfront.

Chapter 1 · The Long Night at Shibati

On the evening of June 5, 1941, dusk lay heavy over the rooftops of Chongqing, the mountain city. By then, Japanese forces had been carrying out indiscriminate bombing raids on the city for five years, and the sound of air raid sirens had become a grim part of daily life. When the siren pierced the dusk again, the whole city tensed. Shopkeepers quickly packed up their stalls, pedestrians quickened their pace, and travelers who could not cross the river in time, women holding children, and old people leaning on canes all rushed toward the nearest shelter. The Shibati Tunnel was the sturdiest shelter in the area. Carved deep into the hard rock of the hillside, its long passage had protected countless frightened people through earlier raids. To local residents, getting beneath the thick mountain meant escaping the bombs above and holding on to the hope of survival. The crowd moved down the stone steps and streamed into the tunnel. Inside, the damp, cool stone walls smelled of earth, and compared with the heat and fear outside, the tunnel felt safe. At first, the tunnel was relatively calm. Some people sat down against the walls to rest; others quietly comforted frightened children in their arms. A few oil lamps burned along the rock walls, their dim light flickering over sweaty faces. No one thought this raid would be any different. It was just a matter of waiting a little longer, until the all-clear sounded and they could return to the surface and go back to ordinary life. But that day's raid dragged on. After an hour, no all-clear sounded outside. After two hours, the enemy planes still had not left, and the alert remained in effect. More people squeezed in through the entrance, and the tunnel grew more and more crowded until every gap where someone could sit was filled. Stale, hot air built up in the enclosed space, thick with the smells of sweat and cooking oil, and each breath pressed on the chest. The flames of the oil lamps on the walls grew weaker, as if squeezed by an invisible hand, ready to go out at any moment. The intermittent crying of children echoed through the tunnel. More and more people could no longer stay seated; they stood up and craned toward the exit. Unease spread through the crowd like a rising tide. People began to realize that the danger was now inside the tunnel.