Yangtze Cable Car Chongqing 2026 — Tickets, Queue & Timing

Usually — but it shuts for a full day roughly once a month for scheduled maintenance, and travellers regularly report turning up to a closed gate because of it. The closures land on a weekday, usually a Tuesday or Wednesday, and are announced only about two to three days ahead on the operator's WeChat account; dates on public record for 2026 include 31 March, 22 April, 27 May and 29 July. Heavy fog or a storm can also suspend it at no notice, and in thick fog the crossing is a white-out even when it does run. Check before you set out. If it is down, the free viewpoints at Baixiangju and on the Dongshuimen bridge still work, and the ¥15 Liangjiang ferry still sails.

One-way, in almost every case. A single is ¥30 and the round-trip is ¥50, which looks like a ¥10 saving — but the return leg makes you take a fresh queue number at the far station and join the line again, and there is no through-ticket fast lane. On a busy evening that is the same wait twice for a four-and-a-half-minute ride. The standard local advice is to cross once, walk the far bank, and come back on the metro or by taxi. Buy the round-trip only if you are riding at a genuinely quiet hour in both directions.

¥30 one-way and ¥50 round-trip (2026). Children under 1.2 m ride free with a paying adult. Three combos are sold, all built on a one-way crossing rather than a round-trip: ¥40 adds an audio-guide headset, ¥45.9 adds a printed souvenir ticket, and ¥98 pairs the crossing with the Cloud Eye observation deck in the tower beside the north station. Check the arithmetic on that last one before you buy it — the deck alone is ¥68 and a single is ¥30, so ¥98 is the sum of the two and buys convenience rather than a discount.

08:00–22:00 from 1 March to 30 November, 08:00–21:00 from 1 December to the end of February, and 07:30–22:30 on public holidays. The number that actually binds is the admission cut-off, not the closing time: they stop letting people in before the last cabin, so allow 30 minutes and plan to be inside by about 21:30 in summer and 20:30 in winter. Sources differ on the exact minute — some say twenty minutes, some thirty, and Amap's listing shows an earlier cut-off at the north station than the south — so treat 30 minutes as the safe figure rather than cutting it finer.

You do not have to book ahead; you can turn up and buy. Tickets go on sale each morning at 07:45 on the operator's WeChat account (07:15 on public holidays) and can be bought up to two days in advance, which is worth doing for Spring Festival and the Golden Weeks, when the day's tickets often sell out the day before. A foreign passport is accepted in person at the visitor-centre window and at the on-site self-service machines, so a passport holder is never locked out. The operator names 携程 (Ctrip, whose international site is Trip.com) and 同程 as its only authorised resellers — a ticket bought elsewhere is still valid but has to be exchanged for a queue number at the visitor centre instead of online, which is slower.

On an ordinary weekday there is often little or no queue, or a wait of ten to fifteen minutes; after about 20:30 the south station is close to walk-on. Public holidays and peak evenings run an hour and up, and two hours at the worst. The mechanism people do not expect is that buying a ticket is not the same as boarding: whatever channel you bought through, you take a queue number on the day, either at the self-service machines or through the 电商取号 function on the operator's account, and you board when your number is called. Arrive about 30 minutes before your slot. The operator's account also shows the live queue count at each station, which is the honest way to choose which end to start from. There is no paid fast lane — anyone at the station offering to sell you one for cash is running a scam and will walk you to the ordinary line.

The north (Yuzhong) station is on Xinhua Road, immediately beside exit 5B of Xiaoshizi (小什字) metro station on Lines 1 and 6; the visitor centre is at exit 5A. It is about a 10-minute walk from Chaotianmen and 12 from Jiefangbei plaza. The south (Nan'an) station is at 上新街 4号: take Line 6 or the Loop to Shangxinjie (上新街), leave by exit 2, and walk 634 m — about 8 minutes, and in Chongqing that means 8 minutes of gradient. The south station puts you beside Longmenhao Old Street and Xiahaoli; the north station is the Jiefangbei, Hongyadong and Baixiangju side.

Stand, not sit — the cabins have no seats and no air conditioning, they take several dozen passengers at a time, and the glazing has yellowed with age. Which side you end up on decides whether you see the river or the back of someone's head, so the move is to push to a window as you board rather than to work it out afterwards. Travellers consistently report the same side of the cabin is the one worth having in either direction: the left going north to south, the right going south to north, for the angle on the Dongshuimen bridge. Press the lens against the glass to cut reflections; there is a slight sway over the water, which is normal.

Yes, and several of the best photographs of it are taken from the ground rather than from inside. Baixiangju (白象居) is a lift-less 24-storey block about 658 m — nine minutes on foot — from the north station, and its lanes and upper levels give the shot of the cabins passing between old towers. The deck of the Dongshuimen Yangtze Bridge, reached by lift, puts the cables directly overhead. The plaza immediately below the south station looks straight up at the cabins arriving. Zhonglou Square (钟楼广场) on Nanbin Road is the long-lens frame from across the water. All four are free and none of them queue.

They are different products with confusingly similar names, and the price gap is large. The Liangjiang ferry (两江小渡) is a working ¥15 passenger boat — under 1.2 m free, bought at the pier, no booking. Hongyadong to Danzishi sails 09:30–18:00 and Danzishi to Hongyadong 09:00–17:30, and a loop service leaves Danzishi once a day at 18:30 calling at Jiangbeizui and Yemaoxi. Check before you count on it: high water on the Yangtze or Jialing suspends the ferry routes outright, which happens routinely in summer. The Two Rivers night cruise (两江游) is a sightseeing product costing ¥158 and up. Locals routinely recommend the ferry over the cable car if what you want is to be out on the water looking at the skyline — but note it is not a substitute for the crossing itself, because it works the Jialing side rather than the Yangtze span the cableway makes.

Conditionally. On a tight two-day trip the irreducible Chongqing experiences are the Hongyadong night view, the Liziba monorail and a hot-pot dinner, and the cable car is a fourth-priority add. It becomes worth doing when you have three days or more, when the live queue count is low, and when the weather is clear. Skip it when the queue is over an hour and you have no reason to be on the far bank anyway, when the river is fogged in, or when you have already done Liziba and your time is short — the marginal value of a second transit-as-attraction ride is low. The Liziba monorail is free and has no queue.