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Chongqin in many ways exemplifies modern day China.
It is the biggest province in China - there are over 30 million people, 10 million in the CBD alone. Yet as a developing city it still has many old buildings.
Our hotel was the most luxurious one we've stayed in so far. It was still not five star or anything, just very nice.
But the view was anything but five star. A mix of decrepit old buildings dwarfed by new, dusty towering apartment buildings crammed with all the signs of hundreds of families living inside.
A short walk from our hotel, a right turn then a left takes us to a form of local market.
Local people have their fares hanging up, or spread out on the ground, or displayed in any which way can grab them the most attention.
Tables are set up between people's houses, cramped into the street.
Slabs of meat, rows of mandarins, jumbles of assorted nicknacks, racks of clothes all displayed in the hope of a few yuan.
Litter, cracked windows, walls badly in need of a new lick of paint are also on display for all the world to see. It might be where they live but no one has any strong connection to this area.
The smell is strong as with all such markets. Tobacco smoke wafts through the air, as does the stench of hundreds of people living and working in such tight quarters.
The stalls continue as we climb up the stairs. Any space is used, making the most of having no room.
Higher up the stairs the stench from earlier is mixed with another door, petrol fumes and pollution. At some points it's so bad we find ourselves coughing and covering our mouths.
At the top of the stairs it's just a couple it's just a couple more turns until we find some more people selling their fares.
These people are less local but more familiar.
Gucci. Armani. Louis Vuitton.
Also McDonalds, Colonel Sanders.
We've arrived in the city centre and it's a very different view from the one just a couple of blocks down.
Things are glittery, shiny, brand spanking new. Alluring.
All of the sudden you can understand the pull of the city life. Why so many people choose to come and live here.
The city is being dragged through modernisation at an alarming rate.
We learn why no one seems to care about the once beautiful but now decrepit buildings not far away. They are waiting for the government to knock them down and replace them with even more skyscrapers.
The people living there will be relocated to new, modern housing. They look forward to the day they are kicked out of their houses.
It is a large city, or province if you're being technical.
It is old and it is new. It is rich and it is poor. It is typically communist and it is typically capitalist. It is Eastern and it is Western. It is beautiful and it is ugly. It is China and it is China.
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