Chongqing by staircase: a half-day route across the Yuzhong peninsula on foot

Chongqing (重庆, Chóngqìng) is drawn flat on maps and is nothing of the kind. Two addresses can share a street name and sit forty metres apart in the vertical, and what joins them is a staircase — worn, unlit at the turns, still the fastest way between them.

Begin at the water tower

The Third Mountain-City Trail (山城第三步道, Shānchéng Dìsān Bùdào) runs under two kilometres between Zhongxing Road and Zhongshan Fourth Road, and nothing at the entrance announces it as a route. You pass the brick tower of the First Waterworks, then the arcaded ruin of the former Ren'ai Tang hospital, its arches now holding laundry lines. Doors open directly onto the steps, and the risers are uneven — a fact about age rather than neglect.

The middle stretch, where the city stays domestic

For long spans the path is residential and nearly level: mahjong tiles, a barber's chair set out on the flat, chillies drying in a wire cage. Most visitors cut this part short because it looks like nothing in particular. It is the reason to come, an inhabited cliff face where the balcony doubles as the pavement.

A staircase here is not scenery. It is the road, and someone is carrying groceries up it.

Cross the water, climb the old road

Finish at Zhongshan Fourth Road, cross the Yangtze (长江) toward Nanshan, and pick up the Huangge Ancient Road (黄葛古道, Huánggé Gǔdào) from the Shangxin Street side. It is a porters' route in stone, older than anything on the peninsula, climbing under banyans until the tower grid lies below you and half-dissolved in river haze. The descent costs the knees more than the climb.

在重庆，台阶不是风景，是路。

Walk it on a weekday morning, when the steps are a commuting route before they are anything else. Avoid July and August afternoons, when the heat settles into the stairwells and stays.