Dadukou District 大渡口区

History

The name means "great ferry". At the end of the Qing, the crossing on the north bank here was the foremost of the ferries along this stretch of the river, and the 1936 Ba County gazetteer records that it became a free charity ferry (义渡) on 12 March 1899. Older finds include the Mawangchang Palaeolithic site (马王场旧石器时代遗址), dated by the district to more than 20,000 years ago, and the Guiting Hill (龟亭山) site in mid-Yangtze at Xiaonanhai (小南海), where the Ba people set up a large market on the north bank in the Warring States period.

On 2 April 1965 three subdistricts were taken from Jiulongpo to form the Dadukou Industrial District, covering just 4.9 square kilometres. It became Dadukou District in 1968, and in January 1995 Qiezixi, Baqiao, Jiansheng and Tiaodeng (跳磴镇) were added, bringing it to 102.83 square kilometres.

What to see

The Chongqing Industrial Museum (重庆工业博物馆), completed in September 2019, stands on part of the old steelworks at Liziling (李子林). Its main hall covers more than 120 years of Chongqing industry; the "Steel Soul" hall occupies a workshop of the wartime steel relocation commission (钢迁会), part of a national protected group of wartime arms-industry sites; and the industrial heritage park displays a 1905 steam engine built in Sheffield.

Yidu Old Town (义渡古镇), under the Masangxi Bridge (马桑溪大桥) on the left bank of the Yangtze, grew up around the free ferry built by local gentry in the Daoguang reign and was an important wartime landing. Restoration began in 2015 with design by experts from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, and the old town opened for business in early 2017. Nanhai Hot Spring (南海温泉) in Tiaodeng draws 57°C water from 2,336 metres down.

Food and local products

Tiaodeng town grows Tiaodeng shallots (跳磴火葱), with bright red bulbs and a registered geographical-indication trademark, and Jiuyeqing (九叶青) green Sichuan pepper on the Zhongliang Mountains (中梁山). The Chongqing food company Huashengyuan (华生园) is one of the main makers of strange-flavour broad beans (怪味胡豆), which are sweet, numbing, hot and salty. Yanxing paper-cutting (堰兴剪纸) is part of Chinese paper-cutting on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and Xie's barbecue technique (谢氏烧烤传统制作技艺) is on the Chongqing list.

Highlights

• Chongqing Industrial Museum 重庆工业博物馆: Museum on the old steelworks site, completed in 2019
• Yidu Old Town 义渡古镇: Restored riverside town on the site of a Daoguang-era free ferry
• Nanhai Hot Spring 南海温泉: Spring at Tiaodeng drawn from 2,336 m at 57°C
• Tiaodeng shallots 跳磴火葱: Shallots with bright red bulbs and a geographical-indication trademark
• Yanxing paper-cutting 堰兴剪纸: Part of Chinese paper-cutting on the UNESCO intangible-heritage list