“Discover the Enigmatic City Where Every Step is a Floating Adventure!”

Ever wondered what it would be like to go your entire life without ever touching the ground? Sounds bizarre, right? But in the wild world of Chongqing, a city in southwestern China dubbed the “Cyberpunk city,” that’s a very real possibility for millions of residents! This dizzying metropolis, with train tracks zigzagging through buildings and public squares nestled atop skyscrapers, is the most densely populated area on Earth, hosting a staggering 32 million people. Thanks to its extraordinarily intricate infrastructure—complete with disorienting elevation changes that can leave you unsure of which floor you’re actually on—many locals can claim they’ve never set foot on “ground level.” So, buckle up for a mind-bending journey into a city that seems to defy logic and gravity itself! LEARN MORE.

For millions of people in the world’s most densely populated city, there is the very real chance they could live their entire lives without touching the actual ground.

And it is all down to how intricately made the so-called ‘Cyberpunk city’ is.

Officially called Chongqing in south western China, the city has gone viral on TikTok for people showing off just how futuristic it looks in comparison to a ‘normal’ city centre – especially at night time when it lights up to represent something that looks like it belongs in Blade Runner.

With train tracks running through buildings, it is home to the Yuzhong District; the most central area of Chongqing that is the most densely populated area you can find anywhere on Earth, with a staggering 32 million people calling the city their home.

Trains run through buildings in Chongqing (Getty Stock Images)

But what is the ground floor? Put quite simply, you sometimes have absolutely no idea.

One video on this has been put forward by TikToker @hughchongqing, who says: “In Chongqing we never know which floor we’re on.

“It looks like I’m on a normal public square, the street is over there [pointing], but if we go here [to the other side], we’re on the 22nd floor.

“But if we use the elevator on the square, it says we’re on the 12th floor. Then we take the elevator to the eight floor and we will be on the streets.”

It’s incredibly densely populated (Getty Stock Images)

Hugh continues: “We go inside the building on the right and it says we’re on the 13th floor.

“We go out from the 13th floor to the building next to it, we will be on a bridge connecting to another building… then when we walk through this building, we’re back on the street.”

Absolutely insane and mind-bending. Have a look yourself:

Another TikToker, Jackosn Lu (@journeyofjackson), made it his mission to try and find the bottom of the city after saying it is easy to ‘spend your entire life without touching the floor’.

During his quest to find the base, he journeyed across ground floors of 18-storey buildings that are actually 12 stories up from where the ground is. And then when hitting what he thought was the bottom, a quick look in the distance showed a school stories below him. Cue outrage.

Given this, it’s common place for not just public squares to be found on roofs. No, you’ll also find petrol stations in the same place due to the intricate layering of Chongqing.

Oliver Wainwright, a journalist for the Guardian, visited the city where he said he would find himself ‘taking steep staircases that led to underground escalators, then across walkways to lifts that ferried me up the side of a cliff’ in order to get to somewhere that seemed only a few blocks away.

There is obviously a ground floor near the Yangtze River – but you’ll think you’re there when you’re actually tens of metres up in the sky (Getty Stock Images)

One person wrote: “I am ABSOLUTELY FASCINATED by this city on a structural level. Like how the hell does everything not collapse in one itself? Truly a marvel.”

A second said: “How do map navigations work? does GPS comes with a 3D model of all the streets above each other?”

And a third posted: “I’m just confused how they pulled it off from an engineering point of view, like, you can’t just keep adding layers?”

Part of why Chongqing has gone solo in its quest to modernise the region is because it is its own municipality. Essentially, this means it governs itself.