Based around a crowded, comma-shaped peninsula at the junction of the Yangzi and Jialing rivers, CHONGQING is southwestern China's dynamo, its largest city both in scale and population. Formerly part of Sichuan Province and now the heavily industrialized core of Chongqing Municipality - which stretches east from Dazu to the Hubei border - the city is also a busy port , whose location, 2400km upstream from Shanghai at the meeting point between eastern river traffic and overland trade routes with Tibet and Burma, has given Chongqing an enviable commercial acumen. It oozes the atmosphere of a typical waterfront city: dirty, seedy and not particularly attractive, but bursting with life.

Able to trace its history right back into legend, Chongqing was capital of the state of Ba when the mythical king Yu , tamer of floods, found a consort here. The current name, meaning "Double Celebration", was bestowed by former resident Zhaodun on his becoming emperor in 1189. The city has a long tradition as a place of defiance against hostile powers, despite being ceded as a nineteenth-century treaty port to Britain and Japan. From 1242 near Hechuan , 60km to the north, Song forces held Mongol invaders at bay for 36 years during the longest continuous campaign on Chinese soil, and it was to Chongqing that the Guomindang government withdrew in 1937, having been driven out of Nanjing by the Japanese. The subsequent influx of refugees and bombing raids did little to raise morale in the undefended wartime capital, as the Nationalists became more preoccupied with a propaganda war against the Communists than defeating the invaders. After the Japanese surrender in 1945 and the resumption of civil war following the failure of US-brokered talks in the city between Mao and Chiang Kaishek, Chongqing remained one of the last Guomindang bastions, falling to Communist forces in November 1949. Since then Chongqing has boomed, becoming economically important enough to split from Sichuan in 1997: more than two million people rub elbows on the peninsula, with five times that number in the ever-expanding mantle of suburbs and industrial developments spreading away from the river.

Built on and surrounded by steep-sided hills, the Mountain City has, in many respects, little appeal. Faster-paced and less friendly than Chengdu, intense industrial pollution is compounded by winter fogs, and nowhere does Sichuan's summer humidity feel more oppressive than on the peninsula's narrow streets. Nor is there much to illustrate Chongqing's history, though some revolutionary sites survive, as do prisons where Reds and subversives were kept and tortured. Surprisingly, then, you'll nontheless find Chongqing is an upbeat city with plenty of character - heavy industry has also brought plenty of wealth - and it's a rewarding enough place simply to wander the streets, in between arranging Yangzi river cruises , and trips west to the Buddhist grottoes at Dazu.