Yuzhong Peninsula East: Jiefangbei, Hongyadong, Chaotianmen and the Cableway

Eleven storeys of stilt-house-style shops and restaurants stacked against the cliff between Cangbai Road and the Jialing riverside — built in 2006, relit in 2018, and since then the single most photographed thing in Chongqing. It is a 4A scenic spot with no admission charge; the district lists it as open 11:00-23:00 and the lights come on at dusk (19:30-23:00 since 3 September 2026 per the 渝中文旅 account, but the hour changes several times a year). Two entrances at two altitudes: floor 1 on Jiabin Road by the river, floor 11 on Cangbai Road at street level — the lift between them is free and the queue for it is the whole story. On National Day and Spring Festival the surrounding roads and both bridges close to cars from 16:00.

A stepped lane on the cliff above the Yangtze, 600 m west of Shibati, that kept more of its real fabric than any other 'old street' in the district: the Ming city wall under your feet, the 1900 French Renai Hall church and hospital ruins at the top, the 1930s Houlu mansion with its Shanghai-style stone gate, and a cantilevered walkway bolted to the rock face with the three Yangtze bridges below. It is the busiest stretch of the 'Third Trail', the 3.9 km hillside path round the south face of the peninsula (city government, 2019). Free, open day and night, restored rather than rebuilt (the district counts one listed and five registered heritage points inside its 5.2 ha) — and during National Day the police close the top lanes to cars by day.

The 1,166 m aerial cable car that has crossed the Yangtze since 1987 — a municipal heritage site, a 4A scenic spot and, in practice, the one ticket every first-timer buys. A few minutes in a 65-seat cabin from Xinhua Road on the peninsula to Shangxin Street on the south bank, with the river, the bridges and the stacked city under you. It was one of the six Chongqing attractions that kept a booking requirement when the city dropped the rest in July 2024, and is one of only two still asking for it (the other is Baiheliang): same-day tickets go on sale on the 长江索道 WeChat official account at 07:45 (07:15 on public holidays) with an automatic queue number; the north station also has a ticket hall. ¥30 single, ¥50 return is the government ceiling price since 1 January 2025.

The tip of the peninsula where the green Jialing meets the brown Yangtze — the old city's main water gate, the 'zero kilometre' of Chongqing, and now the plaza under Raffles City's eight towers and 250 m 'horizontal skyscraper' (Moshe Safdie, 2019). The square and its city-wall gate were rebuilt from 2021 and reopened in December 2025 together with a 2.4 km riverside walkway running to Dongshuimen Bridge; the walkway is free, the plaza is free, and the confluence is best read from the walkway's lower terraces. The paid part is upstairs: the Exploration Deck in the crystal corridor (¥120 on platform listings, 10:00-22:00). The night cruises leave from the piers below — see the separate entry.

The Yangtze-side twin of Qiansimen Bridge (single tower, Line 6 underneath, a footpath on top), leaving the peninsula beside Huguang Guild Hall and landing at Longmenhao, with the cableway cabins crossing about 300 m upstream and the guild-hall roofs directly below. Under its peninsula end lies Baixiang Street, the district's third rebuilt 'lower city' block: the 1891 treaty-port street where Chongqing's first banks and newspapers stood, cleared and rebuilt in the 2010s as a low-rise commercial quarter with a handful of restored bank and consulate buildings and a bookshop in the old 'Xiling' house. Both are free and open; the bridge pavement is the district's best free view of the cableway, the guild hall and the river — and on National Day its Nan'an-to-Yuzhong carriageway closes to cars from 16:00.

The walled cluster of three Qing-dynasty guild halls (Yuwang Palace, Qi'an Hall and Guangdong Hall) that the Hubei-Hunan and Guangdong merchants built above the Dongshuimen riverbank from 1759: carved stages, courtyards and the city's largest surviving physical trace of the 'Huguang fills Sichuan' migration that repopulated it. A national heritage site since 2006, a 4A spot, and the district's one real old interior. Open 9:00-18:00 with ticket sales ending at 17:00; the city lists the price at ¥25 and the platforms at ¥32 — ask at the gate. The Migration Museum inside closes on Mondays while the courtyards stay open.

The 27.5 m octagonal clock tower at the crossing of Zourong, Minzu and Minquan roads is the city's zero point ('the centre' in every Chongqing sentence) and the only monument in China built to mark victory in the war against Japan: the Victory Monument, finished in October 1947 on the site of the wartime 'Spiritual Fortress', renamed the People's Liberation Monument in 1950 with Liu Bocheng's calligraphy, a national heritage site since 2013. It stands in the middle of a pedestrian shopping district; you cannot go inside. Ten minutes' walk from Hongyadong, five from Luohan Temple, fifteen down to Shibati — the meeting point, not the destination.

A 1990s pavilion-and-plaza complex at Linjiangmen where you walk in at street level, cross a public square with a mock-Qing pavilion, and only at the railing discover that the ground you are standing on is a rooftop, high above the riverside road far below. Two footbridges hang from the plaza to the neighbouring office tower's 22nd floor over a 65.8 m drop — the shot from the 2019 film Better Days that made it a pilgrimage for young Chinese visitors. Free, open ground, five minutes from Hongyadong's top entrance and the clearest single lesson in why Chongqing maps lie about distance. The tower itself is now a hospital outpatient block, so the plaza is a thoroughfare, not an attraction with staff.

A working Chan Buddhist temple squeezed between office towers 400 m east of Jiefangbei — founded in the Zhiping years of the Northern Song (1064-67), rebuilt in 1885, home of the Chongqing Buddhist Association, and named for its hall of 500 clay arhats. The 20 m 'Ancient Buddha Cliff' inside keeps some 400 Song-dynasty carvings. Foreigners know it, if at all, as the temple in the 2006 film Crazy Stone. A small paid ticket at the gate (¥20 on the 2025 platform pages, ¥10 in older ones), cash or QR, no booking, 8:00-17:00 by platform listings — the temple publishes nothing online.

The single-tower cable-stayed bridge that leaves the peninsula right beside Hongyadong and lands at Jiangbeizui — Line 6 runs on its lower deck, cars and a footpath on top. The footpath is the frontal view of Hongyadong: from the floor-11 terrace a flight of steps drops you onto the pavement, and from mid-span the whole lit facade sits 300-400 m away across the water. On ordinary days it is a road bridge with a pavement; on 1-8 October and at Spring Festival the police close it to cars from 16:00 and it becomes a pedestrian promenade. For the panorama shot, go to the far bank — the Grand Theatre riverbank at Jiangbeizui.

The stair-street that once carried everyone from the 'upper city' at Jiaochangkou down to the 'lower city' by the Yangtze — eighteen flights, hence the name. It was demolished in the 2010s and rebuilt on the old street grid ('seven streets, six lanes' at the original positions, heights and widths) as a heritage-style commercial quarter that opened on 30 September 2021 with 127 shops. Free and open, with a rebuilt Chongqing memory museum, a Second World War bomb-tunnel site and the French consulate and match-factory buildings among the reconstructions. Read it as a well-made stage set about the old lower city, not as the old lower city: the residents are gone and the stalls sell tourists' Chongqing.

The 45-minute loop from the Chaotianmen piers up the Jialing past Hongyadong and the Grand Theatre, round the confluence and along the Yangtze past Huguang Guild Hall and the cableway — 'not to see the night view is not to have been to Chongqing', as the tourism bureau puts it. Three licensed companies run it (Changjiang Shipping, the Municipal Passenger Ship Co. and Huidong Shipping, per the bureau's FAQ), each with its own WeChat service account. There are three piers between them (Hongyadong pier, Chaotianmen No. 7 and No. 9), and tickets do not cross between companies; which company uses which pier changes, so read the pier on your ticket. Boats roll out 19:30-22:00; platform prices run ¥138-168 for a standard deck, ¥60-68 for a daytime sailing. Real-name: bring the passport you booked with.