Chongqing Chaotianmen Square

Chongqing Chaotianmen Square

Chaotianmen is located at the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Jialing River in the northeast of Chongqing. It commands a vast expanse of water where countless vessels navigate the two rivers. Surrounded by walls on three sides, the terrain is higher in the center and slopes gently downward on both sides. Stone steps climb up the hillside, creating an extremely majestic atmosphere.

Chaotianmen was built in 314 BC when the Qin general Zhang Yi constructed the city of Ba after the fall of the ancient Ba Kingdom. In the early Ming Dynasty, Dai Ding expanded the old city of Chongqing and built 17 city gates based on the principles of the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams, among which Chaotianmen was the largest. The gate originally bore four large characters: “Ancient Yu’s Mighty Pass.” Chaotianmen served as the place where successive dynasties received imperial edicts from the emperor. It earned its name because the emperor was referred to as the “Son of Heaven” in ancient times. Most ancient capitals were built in Luoyang, Chang’an (now Xi’an), Kaifeng, or Yanjing (now Beijing). The most direct route to Chongqing at that time would have been via the Sichuan-Shaanxi Road, but the Shu Path from Jian’ge and Guangwu in Sichuan to Mian County in Shaanxi (now the middle section of the Chengdu–Chongqing railway, stretching 710 kilometers) was so treacherous that it was barely passable—renowned Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai once wrote in his poem “The Hard Road to Shu”: “The road to Shu is harder than climbing to the blue sky.” As a result, envoys sent by emperors throughout history opted for the longer journey through Shaanxi or Hebei and Henan, then onward through Hubei, taking about a month to reach Chongqing by boat upstream from Yichang.

In 1891, when Chongqing was opened as a trading port, a customs office was established at Chaotianmen. In 1927, the old city gate was demolished to make way for the construction of Chaotianmen Wharf. The “September 2nd” fire in 1949 reduced the surrounding 2-kilometer area of Chaotianmen to ashes, leaving only the city wall foundations. Today’s Chaotianmen Passenger Terminal and the newly built, magnificent Chaotianmen Square offer visitors — both domestic and international — a stunning view of Chongqing Peninsula embraced by the two rivers, with the interplay of mountains and waters and vessels bustling on the waterways.

On the left side of Chaotianmen, the Jialing River gathers tributaries and small streams, flowing 1,119 kilometers before merging into the Yangtze River here. Every early summer and mid-autumn, the emerald-green waters of the Jialing River collide with the brownish-yellow waters of the Yangtze, churning with swirling eddies and a stark contrast between clear and murky, forming the scenic “Jiamashi” rapids, whose force resembles a wild horse parting its mane — a truly spectacular sight. In the middle of the river, there are submerged rocks that appear and disappear. Legend has it that Yu the Great married a daughter of the Tu Mountain Clan while stationed in ancient Yuzhou and spent the next 13 years controlling floods without returning home. The woman of the Tu Mountain Clan stood on the rock, gazing toward her husband’s return, hence the name “Husband’s Return Rock.” To the right, the Yangtze River, now enlarged by the waters of the Jialing, surges with even greater momentum, cutting through the Three Gorges, connecting to the rivers of the Han region, and flowing mightily for thousands of miles, making it the “golden waterway” of the Yangtze. The prosperity of Chongqing is, to a large extent, epitomized by its water gateway — Chaotianmen.

The zero-kilometer marker for Chongqing’s highways will be located at Chaotianmen Square. The “zero kilometer” point symbolizes the starting point of a country or city’s trunk highway system and represents the heart of the urban center. China’s zero-kilometer marker has been set at the midpoint of the central axis of Tiananmen Square, while Shanghai has placed its zero-kilometer point in People’s Square.