From 1937, when the government moved inland ahead of the Japanese advance, Chongqing became the wartime capital of China, and for the following eight years it was the political and military centre of the country. That period shaped the city physically: government ministries, foreign embassies, residences, universities, factories and press offices were crammed into the peninsula, and between 1938 and 1943 the city was subjected to sustained aerial bombing that destroyed much of it and killed very large numbers of people. The rebuilt city has covered most of this, but a walk through the older streets of Yuzhong still turns up the period in fragments.
What survives
The most concentrated stretch is along the street known as Zhongshan Number Four Road, where a series of republican-period buildings survive among the trees: the Guiyuan, a villa used for the negotiations between the Nationalists and the Communists in 1945, Zhou Enlai's office in a modest two-storey house, the former site of the Nationalist government buildings, and a row of other offices and residences now used as memorial museums. They are small, quiet and almost empty compared with the city's headline sights, and the street itself, shaded by plane trees and running above the river, is one of the pleasantest walks in central Chongqing.
The air-raid shelters
Because the city is built on rock, the wartime shelters were cut as tunnels into the hillsides, and a great many of them survive; some are still used, as shops, restaurants, wine cellars and even as small factories, and the city has been reopening others as museums and public spaces. There is a large shelter complex near the centre that has been developed as a memorial and exhibition, and the ordinary ones are visible all over Yuzhong, marked by an arched concrete front cut into a rock face. Walking past them, and looking at how modern Chongqing has reused them, is one of the most direct ways to understand what the war years meant here.
Practical notes
The memorial sites along Zhongshan Number Four Road are open during day-time hours, mostly free or with a nominal charge, and closed on Mondays. The street is a twenty minute walk from the Jiefangbei district and is served by subway. Labels are largely in Chinese, so a translation app or a guide adds a great deal, as the significance of the buildings is not always obvious from the outside. Allow two to three hours for the street, the shelters and the memorial halls, and go on a weekday, when the sites are quiet.
