Eateries, bookshops: Chongqing's wartime bunkers get new lease of life

Repurposed bunkers also offer residents and tourists a respite from heat.

- Aw Cheng Wei

People playing card games, watching television and catching up on the latest gossip are common scenes in neighbourhoods across China.

But in the south-western municipality of Chongqing, the country's former wartime capital, such scenes can take place in an unusual setting: repurposed bomb shelters.

These bunkers, mostly built during the Second Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945, when China's then government moved the capital to Chongqing, had fallen into disuse after the war.

But these spaces have increasingly been given a new lease of life in today's peaceful times as community spaces, hotpot restaurants and even car washes.

Chongqing, whose hilly terrain has earned it the nickname of "shan cheng", or Mountain City, has the country's highest number of bunkers. According to state media, there are as many as 16,000 former air raid shelters in Chongqing, an 82,400 sq km municipal city, about 110 times the size of Singapore.

These air raid shelters range in size from smaller ones built using only shovels that can fit two people to bigger ones built by the Chinese army using explosives.

Professor Zhou Yong, 71, the honorary chairman of the government-approved Chongqing History Research Association, said that plans to rejuvenate the city's bunkers were drafted as early as 1997, when Chongqing was granted municipality status and saw its economy develop quickly. Chongqing was previously part of Sichuan province.

Municipalities report directly to the central government and hold a higher political status than provinces. Chongqing, which has a population of 31.9 million, is one of four municipalities, along with capital city Beijing, port city Tianjin and financial hub Shanghai.

Initially, the Chongqing government's plan was to turn some bunkers into underground malls and shelters for residents to escape the city's summer heat, said Prof Zhou, who also teaches at local universities.