All photos by Cecilia Chan

Do you ever feel like Shanghai isn't real enough? Do you walk around Jing’an and wonder "what do all these French people do here anyway? Do they have jobs?" Are all Americans perpetually hungover English teachers? Realness is no issue in the Westside, where the Yangtze and Jialing rivers converge. Enter Gotham City, AKA Chongqing.



A renowned cartographer might need a lifetime to make sense of Chongqing's sprawling landscape. Mountains and valleys stretch for miles and people and land shift constantly throughout its 19 counties (Shanghai has one county). The city was the Guomindang capital in WWII and then joined Sichuan Province until 1997, when it became one of the four highest-level cities in China, along with Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin. These zhixiashi (municipalities) are controlled directly by the central government, meaning the mayor is on the same level as provincial governors. Infamous Chongqing Mayor Bo Xilai made international headlines before and after his downfall in 2012.



The Chongqing government oversees an enormously vast, mostly rural landmass, and some put the total number of people here at more than 30 million, but Chongqing’s population is difficult to quantify because of rampant relocation and rural-urban migration. There’s evidence of this everywhere, for example the bangbang men — porters who will carry your dongxi on their backs up and down the hills of the city. China’s government views Chongqing in a similar way to Chicago during the United States’ expansion — a key to the undeveloped West.




Chongqing is the home of hotpot, the mamasan of ma, that divisive, numbing spice. Most dishes come spicy by default. We arrived around midnight and spotted a sign for the city’s number 2 ranked yibin ran mian — a special noodle only available in the west. Like everything else in Chongqing, the noodles came soaked in spice. Luckily, the zhou (rice porridge) is still mild, so hit that if you get 上火 (too much heat in your body). Talking to the staff foreshadowed language troubles with locals. Even our photographer C, who is straight outta Xi'an, could only understand about 30% of what they said. Foreigners in Shanghai complain, but Shanghairen speak Mandarin pretty clearly. Not the case in Chongqing.



On day two we planned to visit this famous waterfall we saw on a poster at the airport. The world was supposed to end that day and we wanted to die somewhere peaceful without tall buildings crumbling down on us. With the rest of the trip reserved for shows or rehearsals, this would be our only diversion into nature. But we never found a cab to the waterfall so we just wandered around, and the city got more ghetto and more colorful the further we walked.



Chongqing's urban hills are lined with trees in abundance. So many trees, and so much garbage. Bo Xilai oversaw an ambitious initiative to “green” Chongqing, which proved lucrative for those with guanxi in the tree game. We heard of one club-owner taking months off from the nightlife business to get a slice of that tree money. Aside from the abundant skyscrapers, engineering marvels and trees, this place is hood. People lie passed out in the streets, creepy mannequins with missing limbs stare out of cracked windows in abandoned stores, and the buses look like hand-me-downs from the former Soviet Union.



We spotted a temple on top of a hill, declared this our new waterfall and headed towards it. Random turns and corners landed us in a recycling district where a small dog lay in a pile of multicolored wire near mountains of broken baijiu bottles. Amazingly, the little alleys in this favela offered glimpses of lush greenlands and hills. It felt like one of Tolken's worlds. We walked down some steep old steps and into giant vegetable patch in the middle of this sprawling city. Walking along the narrow and slightly perilous path for 30 minutes, we passed cabbages, soybeans, lettuce, and the occasional dog or farmer. The water looked clean enough to drink. There’s nowhere like this in Shanghai.



We emerged from this wonderland into a university area, C suddenly turned around to find a Han Chinese guy just inches behind her extending a long device to fish the iPhone from her pocket. He stopped when she saw him but didn't he run. He just looked right at us. With his thick-rimmed glasses, he could have passed for a graduate student.




We finally reached the steps to the temple, all 1,500 of them. A series of bizarre squirrel statues had been erected every few hundred steps, each holding a sign with knowledge gems on topics ranging from forest-fire prevention to philosophy.



After 1,000 stairs, there was a place to pause for cheap tea and herbal jelly before the final 500, which take you to a kind of recreation area with a giant, sketchy wooden bridge about 35 feet above the concrete. The bridge ended at a small hotel with a rooftop that has a view of the whole city. You can rent a room for 70rmb an hour, if you're feeling sleepy or 发春. We just stood on the roof, looked out and realized that the world was supposed to have ended 10 minutes prior.



There's also a basketball court with hoops at least three feet taller than NBA regulation height and that ever-present purple and gold exercise equipment, for those who want to work out or play an obscenely difficult game of basketball after climbing 1,500 steps up a mountain.

The sun fell and the landscape quickly transitioned from lush to industrial during our descent. Suddenly we were in another dusty, recycling zone with overloaded trucks driving dangerously fast and stone-faced workers who didn’t smile back.

After another meal of hot pot, we headed to NUTS Club for our first show of the weekend. This was my third time DJing at NUTS (Sha Zhong Lu, Shapingba District, 沙坪坝区沙中路, Tel: 6659 3676), a great little livehouse similar to Yuyintang but more comfortable. The boss, Laogui, and the music manager, Mike Weed, always take good care of the Love Bang family. Unfortunately, around 11pm some gangsters in the place got buck and started brawling. Glass bottles shattered and a few faces got cut up real horrorshow. The drum and bass never stopped, which led to several later conversations and forum threads about what a DJ should play if a fight breaks out. Luckily the gangsters left and the show went on.



Chongqing is hard. My friend there witnessed a machete fight with rival crews slashing up luxury cars and limbs in a parking garage one night, and a friend-of-a-friend, a Stanford PhD candidate writing his dissertation on organized crime, allegedly saw someone decapitated in a hotel lobby.

So, what should a DJ play if a fight breaks out? “In The Air Tonight,” “A Whole New World,” “Theme From Benny Hill,” anything from the Lion King soundtrack, or “Knuck If You Buck.” Thanks, Hollerboard.



Nights in Chongqing often end at the street BBQ spot. We hit up a place in Gongren Cun Qu, the Workers Village District. Chongqing owns every other city in the BBQ game. They roast it slow and serve everything together on a big metal plate, skewerless. Definitely get the baby potatoes and quail eggs. After grub we got into a casual breakdance battle with some local kids on the street bumping James Brown on an iPhone speaker. They were the nicest people we met in Chongqing.

Chongqing ain’t nothing nice, but if you want to experience a combination of Hong Kong topography, Detroit / Robocop hoodness and Sichuan spice, you should go. You’ll find plenty of amazing food, mountains, massive bridges and other engineering marvels, hiking, and loads of dirty beauty. Just watch your pockets and mind your own business. I have no idea where that temple / forest dreamland is, but there’s probably thousands just like it. My advice is just wander around - you'll find some adventure for sure.

Getting There:

We flew round-trip on Spring Airlines and Sichuan Air for about 1100rmb per person. Still mad at Spring Air. The flight was sketch and the food was like pet food for homeless animals. Sichuan Air was much better.

We stayed at a super nice four-star hotel called Liyuan Jiudian in San Xia Guangchang (Three Gorges Plaza). It had a pool and a gym and was 465rmb a night, but you can find decent rooms for under 100rmb, easy. For 200–300rmb you’ll do well well.

You can also get a boat all the way from Shanghai to Chongqing. There are sightseeing cruises that go via the Three Gorges Damn and take up to seven days. That will cost you anywhere from 400-1000USD, but that includes all kinds of dubious tourist shit on the way. Not for the faint of heart, but more info here.

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Ian Louisell organizes the Love Bang parties and DJs there and a bunch of places around Shanghai under the name Heatwolves. His DJing sometimes takes him outside Shanghai and he was in Chongqing with an MC and a photographer to play a party at NUTS Club last month. Info on the next Love Bang is here