People were friendly and happy to help. My friends and I did attract some curious stares and questions – during our entire trip we did not come across anyone who didn’t look Chinese or East Asian – and a few locals even asked us for photos. We couldn’t help but feel like minor celebrities, but we were never made to feel unwelcome or uncomfortable.
What was way more uncomfortable were the toilets. Most public toilets in Chongqing are the traditional squatting kind, and they do not provide toilet paper or soap.
Come prepared: I carried a kit of wet and dry tissues, sanitiser and soap with me everywhere we went.
ADAPTING TO AN “8D” CITY
Because of its hills, Chongqing has come to be known as an “eight-dimensional”, or “8D”, city, a reality I experienced on the first day when my friends and I alighted from a taxi and somehow entered a building on the 9th floor.
On another day, we walked into a mall on “Level 1”, yet by the time we had walked across to the other side of the same floor, we were exiting “Level 4”, at street level.
One of Chongqing’s most famous tourist sites showcases this multidimensionality particularly well: the riverside Hongyadong area, where a complex of shops have been carved right into the hills, and which was made famous by the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away.