CHONGQING, July 31 (Xinhua) — Just after daybreak, Luo Mingliang places the final bundle of celtuce right into a bamboo basket and units off from his house in Shichuan, a quiet city nestled within the hills of southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality.
Two hours and two subway transfers later, he arrives at his stall, which is tucked contained in the cool, dim stomach of Hongtudi Station, a former World War II air-raid shelter that has been reworked into certainly one of Chongqing’s most vibrant and unconventional markets.
“These tunnels stay cool in summer and warm in winter,” Luo mentioned with a smile, standing behind crates already half-empty. “I earn over 500 yuan (about 70 U.S. dollars) a day here. My vegetables sell out within an hour.”
The market is a part of Chongqing’s “shelter plus” initiative, an effort to revive the town’s wartime relics by weaving them into the material of recent life.
In May 2024, native authorities transformed this 700-square-meter shelter right into a rent-free marketplace for small-scale farmers and distributors, upgrading the house with lighting, air flow and polished concrete flooring.
“Zero fees. No rent, no cleaning charges,” mentioned Zuo Le, who manages the underground metropolis mission. “What was once a forgotten bunker is now a lively hub for the community.”
Hongtudi is certainly one of hundreds of bomb shelters dug into Chongqing’s rocky hillsides in the course of the Japanese navy’s indiscriminate bombing of the town from 1938 to 1944.
By 1942, the town had greater than 1,600 shelters, sufficient to guard practically your complete inhabitants, in line with historic archives.
While the flames of conflict have lengthy been extinguished, many of those shelters are nonetheless intact and discovering new objective. They have been became bookstores, museums, gasoline stations, and even hotpot eating places.
In Jiulongpo District, a bookstore winds alongside the curved stone partitions of a former shelter, the place some 12,000 timeworn books line the cavernous house. Visitors pose for images with classic avenue indicators, capturing a bit of the town’s layered previous.
“These books, all related to Chongqing, and the shelter itself both carry the city’s memory. Together, they give history a soul,” mentioned Gou Jun, proprietor of the bookstore.
What started as a 40-square-meter house has expanded right into a 400-square-meter cultural landmark, drawing tons of of tourists each day and reviving close by companies.
With a myriad of tall buildings on its wavy terrain and a few architectural marvels, such because the world’s longest horizontal constructing that stretches 300 meters atop 4 skyscrapers and the long-lasting gentle rail practice sliding into an residence constructing, Chongqing has emerged as a must-visit vacation spot for a lot of vacationers.
The metropolis’s client and cultural tourism markets have witnessed speedy progress. In the primary 5 months of this 12 months, Chongqing’s complete retail gross sales of client items reached 680.36 billion yuan, up 4.7 p.c 12 months on 12 months. Last 12 months, it recorded 1.28 million inbound vacationer arrivals, marking a surge of 183.6 p.c 12 months on 12 months.
Yet amid the innovation, echoes of the previous are by no means far-off.
This 12 months marks the eightieth anniversary of the victory within the Chinese People’s War of Resistance in opposition to Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. “More than 80 years ago, these shelters protected local residents when their lives were in danger,” mentioned Luo Zibai, an skilled with China Tourism Academy. “Now, they continue to serve the city in new ways, while standing as a lasting reminder for people to cherish peace.”