Shadowing Practice: Is Chongqing REALLY a Cyberpunk City? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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There's a city that people are calling the real -life cyberpunk city.

So I went there to see if it was true.

It's a city in central China called Chongqing.

It's also been dubbed the largest city in the world, or the 8D city.

Because the ground plane seems to break the very notion of a ground.

And the cyberpunk thing is real, but underneath all the neon, there's a much stranger story.

Like, how did this place even get built?

So, Chongqing, is it the real cyberpunk city?

And the reality is very different from what you see on screen.

And I wanted to start here.

Here!

Because Chongqing is known for their hot pot.

But also, you can understand a lot about Chongqing from this place.

This is actually a bomb shelter.

The whole place is about 20 ,000 square meters, 18 tunnels, 6 meters wide,

6 meters high, and the longest one runs about half a kilometer straight into rock.

And Chongqing is full of these.

More than 1 ,600 of them.

Over a million square meters of tunnel sitting underneath the city.

A lot of them are from the Second World War, from the Japanese attacks.

But this one is from the 70s, from the Cold War.

It was dug in for a weapons factory that moved here so the Soviets couldn't get to them.

But all of this, this cyberpunk city, and the Chongqing that you know, sits on top of this underground city.

But why here?

See, Chongqing sits right where these two rivers meet.

It's squeezed between water and extremely steep ground on every side.

That's about a 60 -story building of climb all within downtown, which is why they call it the Mountain City.

And in 1937, the Chinese government was retreating from the Japanese, which had already taken the coastal cities.

And for their new base, they picked here because the only way in was by boat through these gorges

and it had a long foggy season so it was hard to invade

and it was hard to bomb accurately

and with this new government base everything followed they took the factories apart in shanghai

and in wuhan and they put the machines on boats

and they dragged them up the river through the gorges while they were being bombed.

243 of those factories ended up here.

Then universities came, ministries came and behind all of them, everyone who didn't really want to live under occupation.

This is when Chongqing experienced the first massive growth.

But all of this concentration of people also made Chongqing a great target.

when i was there one day i started to hear these sirens

and it turned out this happens every year on the exact day june 5th

because from 1938 to 1943 japan carried out one of the longest sustained bombing campaigns in history,

218 raids and about 33 ,000 dead.

And on this day in 1941, about 2 ,500 people suffocated inside a tunnel.

And it's called the Great Tunnel Tragedy.

And the sirens mark this day.

But something else happened during this time.

The Chinese government pulled Shangjing out of Sichuan province

and made it report directly to the central government and they kept the status for about 15 years.

So that was the first time they drew the line.

And about 50 years later, they did it again.

But the second time, they drew it much bigger.

A cyberpunk city has this multi -layered density.

And one of the claims about Chongqing is that it's this 8D city

and the largest city in the world with 32 million people.

But that is technically wrong.

When you Google Chongqing, this is what you get.

But the cyberpunk part, the part that you see, is just this tiny area right here.

But Chongqing actually covers all of this because Chongqing isn't really a city.

It's more like a province.

And that distinction is actually very important.

The reason it became more like a province, it has to do with this dam, which was built because of the Yangtze River,

which was very problematic for a very long time, and it caused floods and killed thousands of people.

But building it meant the water behind it would rise more than 100 meters, and it would back up about 600 kilometers.

Meaning, All of these cities and towns and villages that's home to more than a million people would end up underwater, but they decided to build it anyways.

So most of these people would have to move.

And that's a lot of people to coordinate.

So in 1997, the Chinese government decided to redraw the line again,

but this time much bigger and turn it into a direct administered municipality, meaning you You get your own budget,

your own land, and a direct line to Beijing.

There's only four cities like this in the whole country.

And this border put 30 million people under one government.

And from here, everything starts to become a completely different order of magnitude.

So the verticality and the density and all of it kind of went up in the next 20 years, not a hundred.

And building a city that fast on an insane terrain like this, It does something to the buildings.

I am in the second most popular spot here, called Qi Xing Lao.

And as you can see behind me, there's some ladies dancing.

There are certain things here in China that's very true to the stereotype.

But this square became very famous, attracting tourists from everywhere all over the world because of this very,

very strange phenomenon right here.

And you see things like this in other places as well, which is why they call it the AD city.

So this is considered the third highest outdoor escalator in all of Asia.

It's about 100 meters long and it rises about 50 meters high.

And it's considered public transit, so you can get in here with your public transit card.

this is a 24 -story residential complex built in the 90s

and it's famous for not having any elevators oh my god the story is

that they ran out of money so they put in these crisscross stairs instead

but maybe it's also by design because the hill kind of is the elevator

and it can only work because of the terrain.

The buildings have three separate entrances at three different elevations, and each one connects to a different street.

So you kind of have three ground floors.

It's called Bai Xiang Zhu, or Wang Longmen High Rise Residential Group, and it was completed in 1992 as work unit housing.

But this is the weird part.

See, I just walked into a private property, and we just wanted some noodles but I'm pretty sure this was just someone's house

because these corridors are also a shortcut from one street to another

so it's a piece of public street

that kind of happens to run through people's homes

and there's lots of these little interior courtyards

and it kind of becomes a natural gathering place for the community

and it also kind of speaks to how safe it is here.

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But it's also weird.

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I could see people's personal stuff, like their laundry and their shoes.

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Well, what I learned here is that the concept of privacy and personal space here in China is very, very different.

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But also, it's very open.

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This building actually became very popular because of a movie called Chongqing Hot Pot.

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And ever since then, it's become a tour spot.

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And there's all of these souvenir stands.

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And, well, let's just say it's not the easiest place to get around.

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See, I think the reason why Chongqing feels so disorienting is not necessarily because of the height and the density.

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I think it's because it blurs what we understand as public and private and ground and no ground.

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Because the ground is kind of a baseline for us to orient ourselves.

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And it's like a datum line.

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And it's a place where we start counting the floors.

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And in most cities, the ground is also the cultural anchor.

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But here, you have multiple grounds.

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But let's compare that to Hong Kong, which in our last video, I said it's the city without ground.

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And it's actually about four times steeper than the Chongqing Peninsula.

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But you don't get this feeling of this 8D city.

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And there is actually a fundamental difference.

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Hong Kong's solution was to literally leave the ground and build a second ground that weaves in and out of private buildings.

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So that second ground also belongs to whoever owns the building.

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And it leads to a serious lack of public space.

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And situations like this.

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Chongqing is not nearly as efficient as Hong Kong.

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In fact, it's kind of hard to get around.

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We're lost.

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But Chongqing's ground are streets.

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And a street is public by default.

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And there is actually a legal reason for this.

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The city builds the roads first, and then it auctions off the plots between them.

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So a developer leases a piece of land

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that already has roads touching in at least two

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or three different heights and they simply build around them

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but this system it actually only goes back to the 90s

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and it turns out they've been building like this for a

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very long time by the way all of the research

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and custom assets that we made for this video like the section drawings

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and the models and all of the fact check we left in our research site, which we made using Framer, who is also the sponsor of today's video.

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Framer is the AI design agent for every step, from the first idea to a live launch.

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Every one of our research pages share the same bones, the top bar, the color palette, the type, and the way a chapter opens.

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For a while, that meant rebuilding those decisions by hand for every video.

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But now, we've taught the agent how our team works as a skill, our design system, and the steps we repeat.

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So when we started this booklet, it already knew the rules and built the page our way in one go.

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Xiangxing is a city in section, so we really wanted the page to read like one.

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Levels stacked in depth, with the train running through them.

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The agent built that stack, and everything it makes stays editable on the same canvas we design on.

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So the whole team can work on it together, in real time.

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When it's right, you click publish.

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That's it.

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The research page is linked in the description along with a framer link

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and a discount code if you guys want to try it out.

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This is Xibati which translates into 18 steps.

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There's a lot more than 18 here as you can see and it actually connects the upper and lower parts of Chongqing.

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See, the peninsula was walled in the 1370s with the dock down at the water and the town up on the bridge.

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And they actually still call them that, the lower city and the upper city.

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And for about 650 years, the only way between them was to climb.

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And the houses kind of did the same.

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These are the building methods that they've been using for centuries.

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Zutai, cut into the slope, Diao Jiao, prop it into the ground, or Pa Shan, step the building up the contour.

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And over hundreds of years of building like this, the front door kind of stops being a fixed thing.

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So Bai Zhangjiu is just a newer version of this very old tradition.

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So this is the famous train station that goes through the building.

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And all of these people are here to see the train pass through the building.

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I don't know, I guess it's impressive.

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It's a little underwhelming, I guess.

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Yeah, I was very confused.

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And then I found out all of these people are trying to get this shot.

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It's actually a very interesting structural problem.

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Trains are dynamic, they vibrate, and you need to brake.

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But buildings need stability.

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So even though it looks like a single structure, they're actually separated by a 20 centimeter gap.

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So those two things never actually touch.

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The engineer who led the project, he puts it like this.

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You could knock down the apartment tomorrow, and the train would still keep running.

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He says the noise inside is actually much lower than what you would expect, and it gets down to a comfortable conversational level.

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But the reason it looks like this is because of a very unique condition.

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The developer had already bought the rights to this parcel, and here it means you lease it from the state for a mixed -use apartment block for 40 to 50 years,

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and they were planning to build a normal residential tower.

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But then the city's monorail plan came through and they said, we need to stop like right here.

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Now, there's the river on one side and the cliff on the other.

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So you're confined in this direction.

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And both of them did look at moving and rerouting the line or the developer maybe taking another plot.

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And in the end, they worked out that moving actually costs more than sharing.

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So nobody moved.

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They built both of them on one plot.

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The station runs on these three floors with residential on top and commercial on the bottom.

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The engineer had a...

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Very interesting word for what they came up with.

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Jiangzhu, making do, a compromise.

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And this compromise was extremely complicated.

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They went through at least six major revisions over two years.

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And I think the only reason it was possible is

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because every project at the time was pointed at a single goal and getting there fast.

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Because starting in the late 90s, there was a national program called Go West.

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It was a policy to develop China's Western interior, which meant tax breaks, low -interest loans from the state bank,

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and transfers straight from Beijing.

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And this monorail line was actually one of the key projects in this program.

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So when the line reached this parcel and there was a building in the way, going through was just the cheapest and the fastest option.

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And in all of that Go West movement, there was also this goal of developing distinctive tourism.

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But you see the same mechanism as Bai Xiangju, of public infrastructure going straight through a private property.

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But this, this recent internet thing, that's actually something else entirely.

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this is probably one of the most photographed scenes from Chongqing.

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I came here expecting there to be like multiple and multiple blocks of neon, but it's actually just this one little corner.

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It's really designed specifically for the vertical.

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This is what it looked like in the horizontal view, but in the vertical, this is what it looks like.

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Pretty big difference.

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This block is actually a shopping center that opened in 1999

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and all of this neon they did it just five years ago for marketing

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and that same year 10 city departments put out a joint plan called sleepless chongqing 33 designated night market streets

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and 13 demonstration streets but it turns out sleepless chongqing is not

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that sleepless i ended up getting this room that has this 270 degree view

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the city but the lights they turn off at 11 o 'clock all of this neon

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and this insane density of signs

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and lights stacked on top of everything i find this part actually really interesting

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if you remember my video from last time about hong kong

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and how the cityscape became the inspiration for ghosts in the shawl

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but there the neon happened organically it was a very natural urban fabric

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and it was built out of hundreds of shopkeepers competing for

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attention in a very cramped street with handmade signs bent over in flame by master craftsmen.

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And that accidental commercial logic became the visual signature of Ghost in the Shell

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and of Blade Runner and basically the entire cyberpunk genre.

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But then Hong Kong started taking the signs down because of safety regulations and replacements with LED.

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The original is dying, But here, it's getting built.

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This is the iconic structure that kind of looks like the bathhouse and spirited away.

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It's called Hong Yadong.

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But this particular structure was actually built 20 years ago.

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It's completely new.

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This is what was there before.

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During the war, this whole area was a thriving wharf.

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It brought in all kinds of goods, especially paper and salt.

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And along the cliff were stilt houses of people working in this area.

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If you remember from our construction typologies, these are called Dai Jiao Lao.

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But over time, the shipments stopped coming, and the buildings were deteriorating.

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And in 1993, they cleared the house to build this road.

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And most people moved out.

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Then fast forward to 2006.

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The site was purchased by a developer,

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and it was redeveloped to look exactly like before except now it's a single development designed for tourism.

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You could say that the commercialization kind of saved the history.

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There are so many people.

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They even brought back the name Paper Salt River Street.

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Nobody outside Chongqing knew this place before, but now they get about 100 ,000 visitors a day.

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And this is actually something you see all the time in China.

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I went to this historic city near the Great Wall, and it was actually a brand new resort built 10 years ago.

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Even this tile is actually brand new.

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So many places were like this.

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They don't just rebuild a replica of the old.

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They really commercialize the hell out of it.

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so the question is is chong ching a real cyberpunk city in a way but not because of this

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a cyberpunk world is where everything your history and your language

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and your culture has been turned into something to sell

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so in that way i do think it's kind of true But I think there's something else going on here.

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You don't really come to Chongqing to experience it.

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You come here for the image.

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There's this concept called hyperreality.

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This French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote an entire essay on it.

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And I actually learned about this concept in architecture school, but it's finally really making sense to me now.

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Essentially, it's a copy whose original is gone and the copy is more real than the thing itself.

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For example, you take a picture of a place, people come to see the picture, so the place starts building itself to look more like the picture.

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He actually lays it out in stages.

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The image reflects something real and then it distorts that real thing.

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And then it hides the fact that there's nothing real behind it.

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And then finally, it has no relation to anything real.

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It's kind of its own thing until the picture is the only thing people come for.

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And then the city builds itself around that.

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The viewing platform and the entire industry organized to deliver this beautiful image.

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So what you get is just a very flattened version of the city.

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When Chongqing is actually way more interesting.

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It's very safe and people are super nice.

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Oh, thank you.

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But at the same time, it is working international visitors almost tripled in a year

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and I mean I'm also here for the image

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and I got to see so much more of China

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because of that and it was just a few years ago a place

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that I thought was a surveillance dystopia I can't help

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but think about this quote from William Gibson who some people

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say is the father of cyberpunk he says cyberspace is a

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consensual hallucination with millions of people agreeing on something that's not there

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and when we experience the world through social media how do we know what's real

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and what's not and how do we know

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when something becomes a collective hallucination

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so what do you guys think by the way i have a newsletter

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and we share some projects that's not in the videos so

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if you want to sign up i'll leave the link in the description And with that, I'll see you guys in the next video.

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Bye!

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398 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 284 sentences and 3367 words to shadow. The speech runs for 23:04. The speaker talks at a steady 146 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
meter noun	/ˈmitəɹ/	A device that measures things.
neon noun	/ˈniˌɑn/	The chemical element (symbol Ne) with an atomic number of 10. The second of the noble gases, it is a colourless, odorless inert gas.
density noun	/ˈdɛn.sə.ti/	A measure of the mass of matter contained by a unit volume.
residential adjective	/ˌrɛzɪˈdɛnʃəl/	Of or pertaining to a place of personal residence or to a location for such places.
tunnel noun	/ˈtʌn(ə)l/	An underground or underwater passage.
developer noun	/dɪˈvɛləpɚ/	A person or entity engaged in the creation or improvement of certain classes of products.
province noun	/ˈpɹɔv.ɪns/	A region of the earth or of a continent; a district or country.
stack noun	/stæk/	A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch.
insane adjective	/ɪnˈseɪn/	Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind; not sane; utterly mad.
connect verb	/kəˈnɛkt/	To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
tourism noun	/ˈtʊɹɪzəm/	The act of travelling or sightseeing, particularly away from one's home.
climb verb	/ˈklaɪ̯m/	To traverse a slope or contour, either upwards (ascending) or downwards (descending).
transit noun	/ˈtɹæn.zɪt/	The act of passing over, across, or through something.
compromise noun	/ˈkɑmpɹəˌmaɪz/	The settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions.
vertical adjective	/ˈvɝ.tɪ.kəl/	Standing, pointing, or moving straight up or down; parallel to the local direction of gravity; along the direction of a plumb line; perpendicular to something…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
turn out verb		To end up; to result.
get around verb		To move to the other side of (something, such as an obstruction) by deviating from a direct course or following a curved path.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
run through verb		To summarise briefly.
bring back verb	/ˈbɹɪŋ bæk/	To fetch something.
build up verb		To erect; to construct.
carry out verb	/ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/	To hold while moving it out.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 18 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'll, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, thrive /θɹajv/, bathhouse /ˈbæθˌhaʊs/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: residential /ˌrɛzɪˈdɛnʃəl/, efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, relation /ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/
Long words — get the stress right: residential /ˌrɛzɪˈdɛnʃəl/, developer /dɪˈvɛləpɚ/, peninsula /pəˈnɪn.sə.lə/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like meter, neon, density.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	been dubbed · is known · was dug
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	downtown, which is · everyone who didn · dam, which was
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	It's also been dubbed · we've taught · has been turned

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Is Chongqing REALLY a Cyberpunk City? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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