Wushan

[The ‘Goddess’ escalator in Wushan © Wang Xueqiao/FT]

This morning, Friday, I was intrigued by the article at reference 1. But I also thought that proof reading was a bit careless. Had the work been assisted by a computer?

For example, had the entire city of Wushan - at the confluence of the Daning and Yangtze rivers - really been moved, as part of the Three Georges Dam project?

Gemini was quite sure that it had, a city of one or two hundred thousand people, seemingly moved from the flat land by the old river up the adjacent mountain side. Perhaps the size of Gloucester (160,000), Plymouth (240,000) or Portsmouth (250,000).

So Wushan had been moved. But I am still a bit puzzled about the geography of the place, with gmaps suggesting that a good chunk of it is in the river - this last including the intriguingly named Wutai Bacon Store, seemingly some kind of restaurant. Furthermore, gmaps puts the Goddess escalator on the very straight Shennv Boulevard, but without Street View, which might have provided a bit of confirmation. Maybe a careful read of reference 5 will sort it all out.

In the meantime, some of the snaps there make the staircases of Montmartre of Maigret's Paris in the Davies adaptations look a bit tame. But annoyed just at the moment that I can't find the post, which I am sure exists, about the martyr of Montmartre.

PS 1: the figures for English cities above are taken from reference 6. Those at reference 7 appear to be very different. A reminder that care is needed!

PS 2: having only found reference 8 before breakfast, after I I turned up reference 9. Perhaps I had been invigorated by the full page advertisement in Wednesday's Guardian for a giant rollator called a Veloped, to be found at reference 10. What with all the bicycles on our pavements, things would get really interesting if all the old people upscale to Velopeds. Which would suggest to me that they had too much money and needed taxing a bit more...

References

Reference 1: China scales new heights with world’s longest outdoor escalator: Mountainous region of Chongqing is known for pushing the bounds of architecture - Thomas Hale, Wang Xueqiao, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daning_River_(Chongqing).

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushan_County,_Chongqing.

Reference 4: https://www.yangtze.com/three-gorges/lesser-three-gorges/.

Reference 5: https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-worlds-longest-outdoor-escalator.

Reference 6: https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/united-kingdom.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom.

Reference 8: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/12/atkinson-maigret.html. The only post about Montmatre which the archive is admitting to.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/la-jeune-morte.html. It helps to get the spelling right.

Reference 10: https://www.trionic.uk/en/. For the for Veloped.