Memories of Green

Extremely tall, dense buildings, colorful light shows on hundred meter tall buildings, crowded streets, humid weather, the sound of loud Chinese advertisements, an old lady preparing spicy noodles at the corner, and the smell of Sichuan chili. Walking on the streets of Chongqing is an experience like no other for someone who grew up in a small European town. In this short writing I will try to explain why this city attracted me, and most importantly I will try to describe my journey of exploring this other-worldly aesthetic environment. This whole city for me felt like this track from Cowboy Bebop.

The sensory symphony

The vapors of chili hotpot mingle with exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke from passing pedestrians, sweat, the fragrance of fruits, perfumes, and the occasional cool breeze from an air-conditioned sanctuary cutting through the 35-degree night. Honking cars, shouting vendors, advertisements blaring through megaphones, a mother scolding her child, young people dancing for their cameras. Lights arguing with each other—some competing with brightness, others with color intensity. Magenta, blue, green, purple, yellow—the entire spectrum blankets the night sky, glowing like a dead TV channel tuned to static.

Towering buildings, completely alien to my eyes, reach toward the heavens, built into each other along the mountainside. I really can’t express in words how shocking it is to see something so high-rise.

Most cities have only a few tall buildings which make the skyline iconic, but not Chongqing… Here the average height is above 20 stories, which gets even more exaggerated because everything is built on top of mountains.

One street away, darkness. Only a few red lights and the neon glow of small shops show the way, the monumentality of the dark buildings somewhat intimidating. Workers are still busy in the harbor below the tower buildings, while in the distance, the World Trade Center at 350 meters high reminds the city’s 32 million inhabitants to wear masks and entertains those strolling along the Yangtze riverbank with animations. Along the Jianling River, two skyscrapers display red backgrounds with yellow lights, proclaiming the glory of the all-knowing Communist Party to the people. 2.7 million cameras watch over people’s steps, personally ensuring they remain safe here, under the Party’s guidance…

This incredibly unique mixture of feelings and emotions still gives me chills.

Internal landscape

What’s inside me? Shock, wonder, excitement — but not fear. Adventure-seeking, a kind of calm, confidence, and something deeper: an almost desperate urge to bridge the distance between this moment and home. Being thousands of miles away from everything familiar, witnessing something I’ve never seen before in my life, creates this strange pull—this need to somehow transport the people I know into this exact moment.

It’s fascinating how distance amplifies the desire to share. The more extraordinary and alien the experience, the stronger this magnetic force becomes, drawing me back to thoughts of friends, family, anyone who would understand the magnitude of what I’m seeing. This isn’t just about documenting or remembering—it’s about the fundamental human inability to fully process wonder in isolation.

I find myself mentally composing conversations, imagining their reactions, trying to capture in words what cannot be captured. In a city of 32 million people, I am telling stories in my head to others.

On Jianling River’s shore

Sitting by the water’s edge, I notice the old cable way system stretching across the dark river—a relic from when people had no choice but to glide through the air to cross these waters. Back then, there were no bridges in Chongqing. Now, in just the past 20 years, this has become the city with the most bridges in the world. The transformation is staggering, a testament to the lightning speed of development that has reshaped this entire landscape.

There’s something eerie about perching on this shore, watching the lights reflect off the water while towering structures loom overhead. It feels like I’ve stepped directly into a cyberpunk film — Blade Runner comes to mind. The neon glow, the vertical density, the way old infrastructure mingles with futuristic architecture, all set against the backdrop of a river that has witnessed decades of radical change. Reality here feels more cinematic than cinema itself.

Wanderlust in three dimensions

The overwhelming desire to explore every corner of this city consumed me, yet nothing looked familiar—nothing resembled any city I knew. The monumental structure of Chongqing awakened something otherworldly within me, a mixture of wonder and unease that I’d never experienced before.

There were moments when I felt genuinely afraid, not of people or danger, but of the city itself. I got so lost navigating the three-dimensional maze of up and down that I had to retrace my steps back to my starting position, completely disoriented about which direction to go. Sometimes I was hesitant to venture too far from my accommodation because the magnitude of everything was so overwhelming.

A simple bridge crossing wasn’t simple at all. Unlike Budapest, where crossing a bridge means moving from one predictable level to another, here you never knew which layer of the city you’d find yourself on. Would you emerge at the top of a 22-story building, somewhere in the middle levels, or at the very bottom? Even entering another street became an adventure in vertical navigation—the city operated in dimensions that defied my understanding of urban space.

Concrete jungle

Perhaps what struck me most profoundly was the realization that I couldn’t find a single square meter that hadn’t been touched by human hands in some way. Every surface, every corner, every possible space had been claimed, shaped, and transformed by human intention. This total absence of untouched nature created a peculiar ache within me—a longing I didn’t fully understand until I recognized it as homesickness for green.

Growing up surrounded by forests, fields, and wild spaces where nature still held dominion, I had taken for granted the breathing room that comes from places where humans are visitors rather than architects. In Chongqing, humanity had authored every single page of the landscape. The overwhelming creativity and ambition of this place filled me with awe, yet simultaneously awakened some sort of memories of green.