She has gone viral in online videos, as well as being thetourist attraction most popular in the city: we are talking about the iconic train monorail passing through a condominium.
This bold infrastructure is located at Chongqingin the’west China, which, due to its peculiar characteristics, is one unique city in the world.
In fact, it is theurban agglomeration (not to be confused with metropolitan area) largest in the worldcovering an area of 82,339 km², equivalent to the entire surface of Austria, with over 3 million inhabitants. Furthermore, the city, being built close to the mountains, is spread over several levels.
In this article we accompany you to discover the city of Chongqing.
The train entering the condominium: the Liziba stop
Let’s start with her: line 2 of the monorail train, became a real star on social media. Faced with this bold construction, the first thing that arises spontaneously is: what was built first, the condominium or the train line?
The answer is: neither. The condominium and the metro are in fact part of a single project, conceived by the architecture professor Ye Tianyi.
We are in the ninetieswhen the city’s public transport system was being expanded, but the planning for the new monorail train line was not simple: Chongqing is located in a mountainous area, at the junction of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers.
Because of this particular geographical conformationspace to build the new line was limited. But above all it would have had to cross a lot already purchased by a real estate company, which was planning to build a condominium. Thus, the real estate company and the Chongqing Rail Transit Groupresponsible for the construction of the line, came to an agreement: not only that the train would have crossed the condominium, but the building would house a stop.
The project was entrusted to the architect Ye Tianyi and envisaged that the building of 19 floors was equipped with measures to contain sound and vibrations. The work was completed in March 2004 and in 2005 it was officially inaugurated.
The 19-storey condominium therefore houses, between the sixth and eighth floors, the Liziba stopwhich has become very popular on the web and among tourists in the city.
The city of Chongqinq, built on different levels
The Liziba stop is just one of tourist attractions of Chongqing: the aspect that amuses and confuses tourists is the fact that many buildings and streets they are built on more levels. I’ll give you an example: it is not uncommon to access a building from the entrance on the roadonly to discover that the elevator marks, for example, the ninth floor. This is because the city, being located in the mountains, has buildings and streets that climb up different levels. Again for the same reason, it is very difficult to move following the directions of Google maps: the streets are often found one above the other and the best way to move is by asking the locals directly for directions.
Another peculiar characteristic of Chongqing is its impressive dimensions: with his 82,000 km²the city has the same surface area as the whole of Austria. However, there is an important distinction to make: Chongqing is one of the largest cities in the world in terms of territorybut it should be noted that theeffective urban area it is much smaller and comparable to other large global cities. The population density, of 389 inhabitants per km²it is indeed a lot low compared to that of the large Asian metropolises and a large part of its inhabitants live in rural areas. In the 1997 in fact, Chongqing was the subject of a reorganization that he has unified several provinces neighboring rural areas and has thus obtained the status of “municipality directly administered by the government“, that is, a city managed directly by the central government, without being part of any province.
From the Sino-Japanese War to the Civil War: the history of the city
This reunification represented, for the city, a further chapter of one ancient and important history. A crucial moment was during the Second Sino-Japanese Warwhen Japan launched a large-scale invasion of China and the then Chinese capital, Nanjing, dramatically came under Japanese control. The Chinese government, led by General Chiang Kai-shek, therefore decided to move the capital to Chongqing, in the western part of the country, far from Japan. Furthermore, during the Chinese Civil Warthe city and the surrounding Sichuan region became an important stronghold for the nationalist forces of Kuomintangwho opposed the rise of the Communism.
Today, Chongqing is a prosperous city, famous throughout China for its particularly difficult climate, with very humid summers and a thick blanket of fog that often grips it, but also for its spicy cuisine, typical of the entire surrounding region. The city has become an important commercial and financial centera point of reference for the development of the western regions of the country, in a country where traditionally it is the coastal cities of the east that prosper.
