City preview · CHONGQING

Chongqing: an elevator to the next street

An elevator connects Kaixuan Road and Xinhua Road on Chongqing’s steep hillside. A few words tell a noodle shop how much broth to add, while a copper kettle brings refills at Jiaotong Teahouse. The Bayu Folk Museum has a carved bed that served as a dowry twice. Its platform and screens enclose the sleeping space.

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Kaixuan Road Elevator · Editorial illustration, not a historical photo

From a hillside ride to a bowl of tea

The Kaixuan elevator, noodle orders, tea refills, and a bridal bed

Four complete stories and their public sources are shown here; the rest of the collection is in the app.

01 · Kaixuan Road Elevator

An elevator to another street

The elevator doors open onto a different street.

Old Chongqing had an upper city and a lower city, divided by a steep hillside. The Kaixuan Road Elevator opened in March 1986, connecting Kaixuan Road with Xinhua Road across a drop of more than 164 feet (over 50 meters). One ride handles the difference. Often called China's first urban passenger elevator, it has kept working for decades. You enter from one street and emerge on another, with the people and traffic below at a different height. For nearby residents, it saves part of the uphill walk.

Source: dfz.cq.gov.cn Source: cqsuodao.com Source: epaper.cqcb.com Source: chinanews.com.cn

02 · Huashi Wanza Noodles main shop

A few words set the noodles

Three small words can change the whole bowl.

Chongqing noodles come with a small vocabulary. Ganliu means drain the noodles and add seasonings without broth, leaving the oil and chili clinging to them. Kuantang is the reverse: more broth. Tihuang once meant lifting alkaline noodles out as soon as they turned yellow; today it asks for a firmer bite. Say a few words and the owner understands. Chongqing Xiaomian Quandian, a reference book on the city's noodles, notes that tihuang is now seldom heard, while ganliu and kuantang remain everyday orders. At Huashi Wanza, order noodles with soft peas and minced-meat sauce, then add one of those words.

Source: cqph.com Source: news.sina.com.cn Source: zhuanti.cbg.cn Source: cqmj.gov.cn

03 · Jiaotong Teahouse, Huangjueping

The copper kettle comes around again

A refill can turn one bowl into an afternoon.

A lidded gaiwan tea bowl on a square table can buy you a long stay. Jiaotong Teahouse has long benches, square tables, and blue-and-white tea bowls. As the tea runs low, a copper kettle comes around to refill it. People play board games, chat, or sit alone doing nothing in particular. The teahouse is in Huangjueping, familiar territory to Sichuan Fine Arts Institute students and teachers. One painting in faculty member Chen Anjian's Teahouse Series shows people drinking here. Sit for a while and you begin to feel part of the painting.

Source: cgj.cq.gov.cn Source: news.xinmin.cn Source: cqnews.net Source: cpc.people.com.cn

04 · Bayu Folk Museum northwest gate

A bed that followed two brides

This bed crossed two households as a dowry.

This Qing-period nanmu-wood bed first belonged to a daughter of the Dai family in Yuelai as part of her dowry. After changing hands several times, it reached the Ma family. When a Ma daughter married into the Wu family, she took it with her. One bed had followed two brides into new homes. In 1991, the museum acquired it from the Wu family. A babu chuang is more than an ordinary bed: a platform extends in front, railings surround it, and carved screens fit one inside another to enclose a little room you can step into. The sleeping space is at the back. It no longer moves house; birds and flowers remain on the gilded wood.

Source: culture.people.com.cn Source: m.fx361.com Source: news.sina.com.cn

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