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Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

theguardian.com

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Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#71

Post by LetMeLogin »

RadiozRadioz wrote: post #51
LetMeLogin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there about 12 years ago, and in all honesty, I wasn't impressed. The air pollution was absolutely horrific, for whole I was there I wasn't able to see the sun at all due to air or lack of it. "Green" trees were just... grey, covered with all the dust. And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair :) The food was great, though.

> And good luck if you want to grab a taxi and you have long hair Please explain

Pretty much when I tried to grab a taxi, and it was pretty much every day two times, I could see Taxi were free(no people inside, and now I can't remember if I was the light on or off, but meaning they're just free to take you) no one would stop for about 10 minutes. Sometimes 1 passed and I was able to get it, but usually it was 5-7 cars passing me by.... Someone mentioned people were not accustomed to males with long hair.

Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#72

Post by bethekidyouwant »

mathverse wrote: post #49

I am totally uninterested in China mainly due to them being so hostile to foreigners. Yes cities are impressive, technology and culture as well. But you are not welcome. At all. You are sometimes not even tolerated. And because of that your time in that country will be always limited. If China was to become like BKK or other SEA countries .... That's another story.

[flagged]

Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#73

Post by lifty »

decimalenough wrote: post #34
Havoc wrote: post #19

How accessible is this for western tourists?

About the same as the rest of China, meaning not very accessible, but not impossible either. There's a major airport, you need WeChat/Alipay for everything (but you can now easily set up foreign credit cards for these), approximately nobody speaks English but translation apps work and tour guides are cheap, the Great Firewall is a hassle but roaming SIMs can bypass it. The sheer spice level of the food is a challenge…

So, very accessible

Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#74

Post by Stevvo »

rwmj wrote: post #9

Seems to depend a bit on how you define "city proper". Wikipedia has two lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity#List_of_megacities which disagree with this (and each other) on which city is largest.

"Chongqing, which is the largest city proper in the world by population, comprises a huge administrative area of 82,403 km2, around the size of Austria. However, more than 70% of its 30-million population are agricultural workers living in a rural setting."

Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#75

Post by lifty »

mathverse wrote: post #49

I am totally uninterested in China mainly due to them being so hostile to foreigners. Yes cities are impressive, technology and culture as well. But you are not welcome. At all. You are sometimes not even tolerated. And because of that your time in that country will be always limited. If China was to become like BKK or other SEA countries .... That's another story.

What are you talking about?

Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#76

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #67
chollida1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, my family and i just spent 5 weeks over Christmas in Rome, Paris and London. I live in Toronto where we have our share of homelessness and those 3 cities put Toronto to shame with the amount of poverty and homelessness we saw. Europe is beautiful and does many things better than North America and Asia but hunger and poverty are area's where its just as bad if not worse.

That’s something that’s developed over the last couple decades. Europe didn’t have vast amounts of homelessness and poverty. My guess is Schengen plus lax immigration policies. That is compare requirements for entering the UAE vs Europe. Europe is less selective.

[deleted]

Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#78

Post by kelipso »

kubb wrote: post #53
yorwba wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strong state capacity collects the resources of large areas and concentrates them into large-scale construction projects in a handful of places. China has a small number of megacities with large, wealthy, modern urban cores and a very large population that lives somewhere else. There are about a hundred cities with more than a million inhabitants but only 47 have urban rail transit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

That's fair, but the number of cities with urban rail transit is increasing over time. Whether it's the smaller cities paying for the bigger ones... I don't feel like that's the whole picture, but I don't know enough to dispute that.

A first-order evaluation, just looking at yearly income per person, would say that urban centers make more money per capita and thus contributes more money per capita to tax than non-urban centers.

Re: Chongqing, the Largest City – In Pictures

#80

Post by angled »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #68
kubb wrote: post #15

Chongqing seems incredible on pictures and YouTube videos. No doubt it's a comfortable place to live for many people, and surely it isn't perfect, especially when it comes to things like air pollution. What amazes me is China's capacity to do development on a large scale, something that's completely missing in Europe. If we had efficient large-scale construction solved, we could really put a dent in the cost of livin…

It’s missing in most European places because there’s little need for it. When there is a need, Europe does pretty well. At least relative to the U.S. For example, Europe built the completely novel floodgates for Venice. It’s been very successful as far as I’m aware when it was heavily doubted before and throughout its development. On the other hand, the U.S. won’t even contemplate building something similar to protec…

To me, it’s better to compare China with India. Similar populations, yet the effects of different systems of government are extremely obvious.
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