Hongya Cave

Overview

Hongya Cave (Hongyadong) is an eleven-storey stack of stilt-house architecture bolted to the cliff between Jiefangbei and the Jialing River, and it is the picture most people have in their heads when they think of Chongqing. By day it is a shopping and restaurant complex in the old Bayu timber style, with a food market on the fourth floor and a viewing terrace on top. After dark the whole face of it is lit in gold, and the crowd on the opposite bank and on Qiansimen Bridge is there for that single view.

Two things are worth knowing before you go. The complex is a 2006 rebuild, not an old quarter that survived: the last of the original stilt houses came down from 2005 and the new structure went up in their place. And it is busy on a scale that is hard to picture from abroad. On the 2018 May Day holiday it drew 80,000 visitors in a day, second in the country only to the Forbidden City, and the following year passed 140,000. Entry is free, which is part of why.

The comparison you will hear on the terrace is to the bathhouse in the 2001 Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away. The resemblance is a coincidence of style rather than a design brief, but it is the reason the place became a short-video phenomenon, and the reason the queues exist.

History

The name comes from a natural cave in the cliff, and the spot was fortified long before there was anything to shop for. A city gate, Hongya Gate, stood here from the early Ming dynasty in the 14th century, on a site that had served as a defensive position for the old Ba state and its successors down to the Qing. “Hongya dripping green”, the water running down the rock face, was one of the traditional Twelve Scenes of Bayu.

The stilt houses (diaojiaolou) that give the modern complex its shape were the ordinary architecture of this bank. Timber frames propped on poles let people build on slopes too steep for foundations, and the river trade of the 1940s filled the cliff with them. After 1949 the neighbourhood declined and much of it was derelict by the end of the century.

In August 1999 the district earmarked the site for a “traditional folk customs” development in the stilt-house idiom. Demolition of what remained began in 2005, construction of the new complex started in 2006 under a Shenzhen design firm, and the doors opened on 29 September 2006. For its first decade it lost money. Then the short-video apps found it, the Spirited Away comparison went round, and from 2016 the visitor numbers turned it into the busiest free attraction in the city. It is rated a national 4A tourist site, one rung below the top grade.

Visiting

The complex runs from Jialingjiang Binjiang Road at river level up to street level on the Jiefangbei side, and you can enter at either end. The top entrance is the one to use if you are walking from Jiefangbei; the riverside entrance is where the buses stop. Opening hours are 09:00 to 23:00, and the exterior lighting comes on around 20:00 and stays on until closing.

Inside, the floors sort themselves by function. The fourth floor is the food market, heavy on the numbing-hot mala snacks the city is known for; the middle floors are shops selling the usual mix of local crafts, chilli products and souvenirs; there are hotels within the structure; and the top level is the viewing platform over the Jialing. The floor numbering is confusing because the building is set into a slope, so the “ground floor” at the top is the eleventh floor from the river. Lifts exist but the stairs and the outside walkways are the point.

The best photographs are not taken from inside. Cross to the north bank or walk out onto Qiansimen Bridge, the cable-stayed bridge immediately east of the complex, and the whole lit face sits in the frame with the skyscrapers of Jiefangbei behind it. The Jiangbei Grand Theatre side of the river is the other classic angle. Between 19:30 and 22:00 both spots are packed, and the bridge pavement moves in one direction only.

Getting there is easy: Line 2 to Linjiangmen (exit D) or Lines 1 and 6 to Xiaoshizi, then a short walk. The address is 88 Jialingjiang Binjiang Road. There is no ticket, but on busy dates the site runs a free timed-reservation system through its WeChat mini-program, with a daily cap of 122,000 people.

Tips

Go twice if you can: once in daylight to look at the structure and eat, once after 20:00 for the lights. Trying to do both in one visit means arriving at the worst hour.

Eat on the fourth floor or not at all. The restaurants with a river view charge for the view; the market stalls sell the same mala skewers and cold noodles for a fraction of the price.

Skip the Golden Week holidays (1 to 7 May and 1 to 7 October) and Chinese New Year. The record-setting crowds are on those dates, and the reservation system fills early.

Bring a jacket for the terrace in winter. Chongqing’s damp cold sits on the river, and the top-floor platform is exposed to it.

Nearby

Jiefangbei, the pedestrian shopping district around the Liberation Monument, is a ten-minute walk uphill and is where the city’s high-rises, department stores and hotpot restaurants concentrate.

Liziba station, where the Line 2 monorail runs through the middle of a block of flats, is further west on the same Line 2 that serves Hongya Cave, and Eling Park sits on the ridge directly above it, with the best daytime panorama of the peninsula and both rivers.

Ciqikou, the old porcelain port on the Jialing, is the real version of what Hongya Cave reconstructs: a Ming and Qing river town of stone-paved lanes, 20 minutes out on Line 1 from Xiaoshizi.

The Yangtze River Cableway leaves from near Xiaoshizi station and crosses to the south bank in a few minutes; the city page has the details.