Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

What “largest city” means

• Several commenters stress that Chongqing’s “city” status is administrative: the municipality is the size of a small country, but only a small fraction is urban.
• Chinese 直辖市 are closer to “direct-administered municipalities” than cities in the usual English sense.
• Comparisons to Tokyo, Jacksonville, and others highlight how rankings mix city proper, metro area, and whole regions.
• Some argue density and travel time to center are more meaningful than raw area or population. Others note that in Chongqing most residents are rural, so the headline claim is misleading.
• If Chongqing counts as “largest,” some say the Greater Bay Area (Guangzhou–Shenzhen etc.) would then be even larger.

Urban form, aesthetics, and livability

• Many are captivated by Chongqing’s verticality: stacked layers of city, extreme staircases, rail lines cutting through buildings, and futuristic skylines.
• Others find elements performative or uncomfortable: unreachable bookshelves in the bookstore, rail through an apartment block, dense high-rises.
• Some visitors prefer Chongqing’s “charm and diversity” to Beijing or Shanghai; others find it far less comfortable due to terrain, crowds, pay, and job options.

Climate, pollution, and daily experience

• The city is described as extremely hot, humid, and pervaded by spicy hotpot smells; locals use very high spice levels.
• Past air pollution is recalled as “horrific”; some claim skies have significantly improved, others remain skeptical, noting the photos still show haze.
• Practical travel notes: airport access is good, cashless apps are essential but now usable with foreign cards, English is rare but translation tools help. Reported as very safe, with the main risks being smoke-filled rooms and overeating.

Housing, construction, and inequality

• Chongqing housing is said to be much cheaper than Beijing/Shanghai, but within China big-city housing generally remains expensive relative to incomes.
• Multiple comments describe housing as the primary investment vehicle due to weak equity markets and hukou incentives, fueling demand and vacancies.
• China’s strategy is framed as building many Tier-2/3 cities to redirect pressure from top-tier hubs, rather than “solving” megacity affordability.
• There is admiration for China’s large-scale building capacity, contrasted with perceived European/US paralysis from regulation, NIMBYism, litigation, and unclear governance.
• Counterpoints: quality problems (“tofu-dreg” projects), inequality between glittering cores and poorer regions, and historical parallels where grand projects coexisted with hardship.
• European examples (Vienna’s Seestadt, Dutch incremental building) and US public housing failures are debated as alternative models and cautionary tales.

Governance, infrastructure, and geopolitics

• One side links China’s rapid urbanization and infrastructure (HSR, power grids, renewables) to strong state capacity and coordinated planning; another attributes it partly to inequality, central resource extraction, and politically driven “make-work” construction.
• There is a long argument over whether China’s system is “fascist,” its human-rights record, and how to weigh massive poverty reduction against repression and lack of dissent.
• Several argue the West should treat China’s rise as competitive pressure to reinvest in infrastructure, housing, education, and industrial policy, rather than dismissing it with moral criticism. Others emphasize demographic, geopolitical, and economic risks that could limit China’s long-term dominance.

Foreigners’ reception and safety

• One commenter sees China as unwelcoming to foreigners; others strongly dispute this, citing personal experiences and online accounts (especially from Black Americans) of feeling safer and more accepted than in the US.
• Skeptics note that some positive influencers may be state-aligned and that discrimination did surface, for example toward Africans during Covid.
• Several participants compare this to deteriorating civil-liberties and migrant treatment in Western countries, arguing that self-critique should apply on both sides.