Coketown

2008

“It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.” Coketown description in novel “Hard times” by Dickens. 

Chongquing is grim, it is industrial, with polluted air and in meetingpoint of two greenish rivers. Built on mountains and partially surrounded by the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, it is known as a "mountain city" and a "city on rivers". Chongquing is abandoned by the sun even in brightest summer days. In spite of all that it is one of my favorite cities in China, since I first encountered it by accident years ago.