Asian Insider Podcast

What lies beneath: Chongqing’s subterranean world

Exhibition panels explaining Chongqing's specialties such as its history, food and culture, located at a bunker-turned-bookshop.

ST PHOTO: AW CHENG WEI

Li Xueying

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Synopsis: The Straits Times chats with ST’s global correspondents about life as it goes on, amid the screaming headlines and bubbling crises.

Chongqing bears a grim wartime history. As China’s wartime capital which Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government decamped to in 1937, it was heavily bombed during the Second Sino-Japanese war. Bunkers - some 16,000 - were built into the city’s hills and mountains, sheltering terrified residents as the bombs rained down.

Some eight decades on, the Chongqing government has given these underground shelters a new lease of life.

In this episode, ST’s foreign editor Li Xueying speaks to China correspondent Aw Cheng Wei about what it is like to be in those bunkers today, and why Chongqing is approaching its wartime past different from other Chinese cities.

Highlights (click/tap above):

00:50 - Bookshops, car washes and mahjong sessions

03:00 - A real coming to terms with its history?

09:00 - Making the most of one’s past

14:10 - The Straits Times sets up shop in Chongqing

Read Aw Cheng Wei’s article here:

https://str.sg/w2Esn

Read Li Xueying’s articles:

https://str.sg/iqmR

Follow Li Xueying on LinkedIn:

https://str.sg/ip4x

https://str.sg/stnewsletters