The 10 Biggest Cities You've Never Heard Of (Probably) 

The entire list could probably be filled with Chinese and Indian cities alone. Also, Nanjing is quite well-known for unfortunate reasons related to WWII.

Fun fact :The subway system in Xi'an went extremely slow and difficult since Xi'an has been the capital city for 13 ancient dynasties. For every kilometer you go underground you may accidentally encounter an archeological site with hundreds or even thousands of years' history. There is a joke saying that the busiest people for Xi'an subway construction are not engineers but archaeologists.

Idk how many people have heard have heard of Nanjing, but a lot have probably heard of Nanking (most likely because of what the Japanese did there and the Opium Wars); those are the exact same place, just written differently (as you may have guessed)

It's weird clicking on this video and seeing my own city, but considering Nagoya is famous within Japan for being skipped over and ignored despite its large population and historical significance, it makes sense. Here are a few more interesting facts about Nagoya: Nagoya has the annual World Cosplay Summit, Nagoya Station has the tallest railway-station building in the world, Nagoya Station is also one of the oldest in Japan opening in 1886, the Nagoya area also contains the largest Brazilian population in Japan (mostly because of Toyota), and while Japan is more known for things like fish, Nagoya is the chicken capital of Japan with its own style of chicken wings famous all over the country.

Fun fact - Chongqing and Chengdu have a major rivalry that has existed since at least the Qing Dynasty For context, Chongqing is like taking metro Chicago with the terrain of Pittsburg. It has a lot of good universities and is a very industrial city. Chengdu is a very electronics heavy, somewhat counterculture city that’s often gets in trouble for “ignoring” Beijing. Like a supersized Seattle. Unsurprisingly, an American consulate is located on the city.

I would have thought Shenzen was a well known city, especially due to its huge number of tech manufacturing🤔

I lived in Chengdu in 2016/2017, and visited Chongqing on two occasions. I found the duality of the two so intriguing. They're connected by high-speed rail and despite being roughly the same distance apart as Montreal and Toronto, the trip takes only an hour and 45 minutes, and cost roughly $20CAD. Chengdu is pan-flat and sits at the bottom of the Sichuan basin, but is only about a 1-hour drive away from the foot of the Sichuan mountains, the highest range east of the Himalayas with Mt. Siguniang standing at over 6000m. On a clear day (pretty much only ever after summer rain) you could see the snowy peaks from the city. But most days are humid, cloudy and windless. Not to mention the air pollution. The only way to describe a midsummer day in Chengdu is "heavy". Converseley, Chongqing is at the eastern edge of the basin, and at the confluence of the mighty Yangtze and Jialing rivers. The second time I was there, the water was so low, that you could walk down into the riverbed, where locals would have picnics and fish. On the legs of the bridge, the high water mark was visible about 20m higher up. Rising dramatically from the river is the mountainous topography that the rest of the city is built on/into. It's easily the most dynamic city I've ever been to and to me, is a unique place in the world. Built into the caves in one of the riverside cliffs, is a nightlife area full of bars and restaurants, called the hongya caves, which I believe inspired the architecture seen in the anime film Spirited Away. Aside from the monorail and bus systems, their transit network also features cable cars that traverse the rivers, but serve more as tourist attractions these days, considering the insane lineups you have to wait in to ride them. It also features from what I remember, the world's longest escalator, which you can access with the same card as the metro. During the Sino-Japanese War/WW2, the KMT moved their capital to Chongqing, where they built a network of tunnels/caves/bunkers into the mountains where they could take refuge from bombings. Today, the networks are still part of the city, and many of these underground spaces serve as social spaces - probably most often and famously, as hot pot restaurants. Much like Chengdu, the climate is extremely humid, and somehow even hotter. It's known as one of the 3 furnaces of the Yangtze River valley along with Wuhan (which probably would have also been in this video if it weren't for the pandemic) and Nanjing. The two cities also spar over who makes better hot pot. Otherwise, the character of the cities couldn't be more different. Like the flatness of Chengdu, the locals are laid back, indulge in the very Sichuanese art of public napping and spending all day playing majiang and drinking tea. It's often said that Chengdunese fight with their mouths, and Chongqingers fight with their fists. And I find this apt, as the whole city of Chongqing feels much more brutal. It's more of a fast-paced, rabble-rousing city and it's felt in the people and the dynamism of its landscape and architecture. As someone else in the comments likened it to Chicago, I'll agree wholeheartedly. In what those cities lack in notoriety, being behind others like Beijing, Shanghai, New York, LA, etc., they make up for in character and uniqueness. They're cities with a ton of soul.

Chongqing is a really cool place. You're right, it is incredibly hilly, but it's still dense. So a building might have a "ground floor" on the 1st floor and the 20th. But a big part of the population is that despite being classified as one "city", it's the size of Austria. If you only counted the built up area, it would be much lower on the list.

As a chinese american, feels sort of surreal that half of the list are cities that I know about, and most people probably never even heard of. Wasn’t even thinking Xi’an and Nanjing would make the list as they were touched on in my world history curriculum as Chang’an and Nanking respectively. And I would’ve imagined Shenzhen to be more known about from all the controversies of Huawei and other Chinese tech companies in recent years. And a bit more about Chongqing’s urban rail system: it took a Japanese influence, compared to the HK MTR influence of other chinese metros. Signage was designed by a Japanese firm in the style of JR East’s signage. The monorail rolling stock on lines 2 and 3 are Hitachi’s. Lines 4 and 5 have express through service along a portion of the loop line. Through service past a metro line’s terminus is something you rarely see in chinese metros, but very common on Japanese metros/railways. All part of why Chongqing is my favorite urban rail system in China, as tbh, most others are pretty cookie-cutter and “boring”.

Chennaite here. Surprised you didn't talk about the metro system here. The city is undergoing a major metro rail network overhaul. 2 lines are already opened and operational since a few years, and 1 more line is under construction. Two more lines have been identified with all tests and studies done and are about to begin construction. Altogether spanning all across the city. The city also has a large bus transit network, covering all corners of the city and outside too.

It’s funny because if this video was made in 2019 then Wuhan would have been on the list.

timestamps: 10 | Xi'an, China 1:33 9 | Luanda, Angola 2:37 8 | Nanjing, China 3:31 7 | Chengdu, China 4:33 6 | Nagoya, Japan 5:54 5 | Chennai, India 7:23 4 | Shenzhen, China 8:30 3 | Guangzhou, China 10:09 2 | Tianjin, China 11:35 1 | Chongqing, China 0:20 12:47

This is cool and I think non-Western cities in general don't get talked about enough in urbanist circles. On the one hand I do get there's language barrier issues, differences in economic level of development, and differences in political structure. But cities outside North America/Western Europe do some neat things and no cities match the public transit that East Asian cities have except maybe Moscow. Everybody loves Dutch cities of course but there's good and interesting things, as well as familiar challenges, in parts of the world that most anglo-phone folks don't think much about!

To add some more trivia: Nanjing was the capital of many Chinese dynasties and regimes (it was last the capital under the ROC). Nan-Jing literally means "southern capital," while Bei-Jing means "northern capital" (incidentally Tokyo means "eastern capital"). Nanjing was also known (minorly) for naturally colorful river rocks (Yuhua stones), but that's pretty much gone by now.

I took lots of Asian history classes in college, so I knew most of the Asian cities. Very surprised you didn't know about Xi'an. It was the original capitol & cultural heartland of China, until they decided to move it to Beijing in the Ming Dynasty.

Language barrier do exists. As a Chinese, Those East Asian cities in this video, no matter Nagoya, Chongqing, Nanjing and more, is very familiar to me. Many of them were famous big cities since thousands years ago.

Puebla is similar in size to Denver and Santo Domingo, and is not some small provincial hub close to Mexico City. And its not some unplanned mess, its a pretty meaty, grand and urban city. La Plata in Argentina is another classic example. Brazil had too many cities like this, it's not just Rio, Sao and the "provinces".

Talking about the population of Chinese cities is kinda tricky because "cities" in China are extremely large jurisdictions with municipal boundaries spreading far beyond their metro areas (in China, counties are subordinate to cities, and "cities" can cover thousands of square miles of area). Chongqing, in particular, is probably the biggest exemplar of this issue. It is a "directly administered municipality", which puts it equivalent to a province in administrative hierarchy and covers an area larger than Austria, but a large portion of its some 33,000,000 residents live in far-flung rural areas of the "city". Also, Chengdu is generally considered to be in southwestern China, not central (which would be where Wuhan is).

China and India are an universe inself, each one is their own "Americas" in terms of population. Imagine New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Lima and Bogota in the same country, same flag, sometimes even the same region, and only one of them is the capital.

Wow I am actually current residing in Chongqing! Chongqing is by far my favorite city in China outside of Shanghai. The city itself is so physically 3-dimensional from the seemingly minimum 30+ story building requirements and the hills and mountains that the city is built on. Chongqing is also the only city in China that doesn’t have exclusive bike/scooter lanes because the city is so mountainous that bikes and electric scooters aren’t going to cut it. I assume this put extra pressure to design such impressive metro system. The main part of the city is divided into three parts by two large rivers (lesson known Jialong River to the north and Yangtze River to the south) running west to east. The best thing about the bridges that span these rivers is that they are all walkable! Most large bridges in China don’t include pedestrian lanes (e.g. none in Shanghai do). Chongqing also has a seemingly laissez faire approach to zoning a building. Within many residential buildings are entire floors that are a hotel, other floors that are a different hotel, floors with restaurants, barber shops, eyeglasses stores, and basically most businesses you could think of. Last thing I love about chongqing is that lots of national parks are just a bus or high speed train ride away. Lots and lots of gorgeous mountains, rivers, and other geological formations out here. And some of the most beautiful flora and fauna too. I know it’s not everyone’s top travel destination in China (not that anyone can come to China right now anyways 😂) but if you ever find yourself in China for an extended period of time, Chongqing is a great city to visit!

Latín América is a good example. We tend to think of countries like Colombia and Argentina as having like 5 or 6 mayor cities with the rest being provincial hubs. There is definitely a Global Divide issue, some Latin American mid sized cities have more of a urban feel compared to US cities but have a less influential global economy, while other Latin American cities are similarly big but never managed to build a truly urban feel.

Chongqing is by far the coolest place I've ever lived. Dirt cheap rent, unbelievable transit and architecture, great food, amazing people. Everyone should go if you get the chance. It's also about 90 minutes away from Chengdu by train, which is an equally wonderful place.

Shall do the stereotypical Chennai person online thing and point out, tiny bit unfair on the description for Chennai. Glossed over its history but, at least from a city-planning/urbanism/transit perspective, it deserves more. Great commuter train network, incredibly well connected bus system, two existing lines and three under construction metro lines being built, plus some focus on building a more sustainable, car-free city

Nagoya is in the perfect place if you want to visit Japan, specifically Kansai, but can’t find available accommodations in Osaka or Kyoto. With the Japan rail pass, you can easily hop on and only need to sit on a train for 45 minutes. That’s not to say there’s nothing to see there, there’s Nagoya castle, the Toyota museum, and the humble Osu Kanon district. There’s also Sekigahara, the site of the last big battle of medieval Japan, if you want to hike in rural Japan, all just a local jr ride away

I've been to all these cities aside from Luanda, I need to bump that up in priority. Chongqing is truly mind-blowing! The downtown is so dense, it can barely be described. You can't use a map here because there are two levels of street navigation: the street level and the building-to-building level as many edifices have walkways half way up between them. Outside of downtown the city expands endlessly, and seems to be nothing but tall apartments. I need to shout out Chennai, that city has a really cool vibe with an interesting restaurant culture and market districts. It's also very colorful, the citizens love to paint everything bright colors and the temples feature symphonies of hues. The areas around Chennai are crammed full of ancient temples and towns, one of the most culturally rich regions I've been to.

You've gotta respect the honesty of this guy. "Yeah I don't actually have any in-depth knowledge of these places. I just did a quick Google search which you could have easily done yourself."

How can you know Ahmedabad but not Shenzhen, Chongqing, Nanjing, Xi'an, and Chennai? Shenzhen, Nanjing, and Xi'an are especially recognizable

重庆 Chongqing is literally so awesome. SO much good food, SO much cool culture, it's amazing. 贵阳 Guiyang and 成都 Chengdu are cool too.

As a Chennaiite, I think that you didn't cover the city enough - the great transit, beaches and neighbourhoods. And it is also a major cultural centre apart from the movies - for instance, it has a month-long Music and Dance festival that is visited by tons of people from India/outside India It's not just a big boring industrial city. I also think there are lots more of great pictures/videos that would do more justice to the city than what you used. PS: Don't get me wrong on the criticism - I love your videos, just that this one did Chennai a disservice.

Luanda is now one of the most expensive cities in the world for expats.

Xian (silk road), Nanjing (former capital + WW2), Tianjin (Beijing events of 1900), Shenzhen (Chinese Silicon Valley) and Guangzhou (only port open to foreign commerce in the 18th century) are pretty famous I would say. More than say Kinshasa. But it’s true I know next to nothing about Chongqing.

I did my bachelor's degree in the city of Nanjing two years ago and it was at that time I realized how underrated some Chinese cities are. I am definitely planning to go back there and explore other cities included in this video's list (Chengdu, Guangzhou, Chongqing) . China has many things to offer and you wouldn't regret visiting it at all!

5:46 I wanted to point out after I saw the earlier release on Curiosity Stream that many of the innermost ring roads in Chinese cities are the location of the former city walls. Knocking the obsolete walls down in favor of roads was a major undertaking that's worth looking into. The innermost ring road is actually not highlighted on that map of Sichuan, though visible, but it and the first three highlighted rings were almost definitely walls. The outermost road is likely the only one that's a new modern path.

Chongqing is another relatively new city by Chinese standards. It's only been around since the 1700s. For a long time it was totally eclipsed as a small settlement by neighboring and very ancient Chengdu. But then it got a huge boost when the Republic of China made Chongqing its capital city during the Japanese invasion in the 1930s and 1940s, after Nanjing had fallen. Lots of refugees flooded into this new capital city during these years, which turned Chongqing from a small non-entity city into one of the most important in China. And apparently that continues to this day.

Always great content. Thank you. What is the electronic/ blinking decor behind your right shoulder? Perhaps an illuminated transit line??

Great video, as always. Like most I knew nothing about those cities, except one - Guangzhou. A famous footballer from my country played there for a few years and suddenly the media was filled with countless of articles about this city.

I've stayed in Nagoya (na-go-yuh) and been there twice. Very busy city. The subway system is great and the city is one of the few in Japan that is awake late.

Jeez, as an America, it's downright embarrassing to hear how fast those metro systems were built. It took nyc 10 years to open 3 stations on 2nd Ave lol

Really love your channel, this is exactly the type of content that I'm looking for when i'm bored. Very informative and entertaining and easily digestible. Keep up the great work!

happy to see my fascination/admiration for Chinese rail isnt as niche as i thought. I had always been amazed at the sheer amount of High Speed Rail that they have managed to build over the past 20 years, so it doesnt really come as a surprise that theyve been doing the same thing at scale within their cities as well.

3:44 In Age of Empires 3 Asian Dynasties DLC, the Porcelain Tower is one of the Wonders you have to build to age up for China. As a bonus, it gives some crates after the age up, and passively gives you a slow amount of ressources you want, whether it's food, wood, coins or all 3. Of course, getting the wonder destroyed makes you lose that passive bonus.

Great concept! Most people know nothing about my city Calgary, even though it's the 3rd largest in Canada after Toronto and Montreal. Vancouver has a large urban area but the actual city's population is about half that of Calgary.

Best youtube channel ever... I never thought I could be interested in cities and urban planning until I found this channel haha

I lived in Guangzhou for 2.5 years, and I've got extended family outside Nagoya, so it was GREAT to see them get some love here!

It's really interesting that Shenzhen is considered a Mandarin-speaking city when all cities within Guangdong province were traditionally majority Cantonese speaking. Due to massive internal migration from the last 10 or so years, it shifted from majority Cantonese to majority Mandarin. You'll only really find Cantonese speakers at traditional markets. My mother's family were among the first to move to Shenzhen when it was planned to be an SEZ, and my grandfather helped to recruit people to move there, he also was the architect of some of the older skyscrapers that still remain.

Though it's been a while, I didn't realize Kinshasa was that heavily populated and kind of fascinated by the urban layout with most of those cities in China. Love those shipping ports too. Not sure why, but I find the logistics of it very interesting.

You could spend days exploring Nagoya station without ever going outside. Not only is the station building itself a massive mall, it's also connected to several other big shopping complexes via inter-building and underground passages that stretch all the way to the next subway stop.

Xi'an, Nanjing and Chongqing have all served as China's capital in the past. Nanjing was Chiang Kai-shek's capital until the Japanese invasion forced the Nationalists to flee upriver to Chongqing, which suffered a bombing campaign at the same time as the London blitz, and on a similar scale. (I did my Ph.D. on Chongqing in its treaty port days.) Nanjing has suffered more than its share of misfortune. The rebel Taiping regime made the city its headquarters between 1851 and 1864, and at one point after an unsuccessful counter-rebellion blood literally flowed through the streets! And of course, the Japanese takeover was accompanied by the Nanjing Massacre, with widespread murder and rape.

Thanks for such a great video. As someone who is currently living in China, please allow me to add some corrections and comments to your video: 1. Xi'An is a fascinating city and you absolutely should visit it. In addition to the Terracota Warriors, it's also renowned for being home to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, Hui Street (some of the best street food in China is found here) and the fantastic Mt. Hua is only a 20 minute high speed rail ride away if you want to escape the city scenery. 2. You can actually visit Najing's Porcelain Tower, as they rebuilt a replica of it in 2015. Not only that, but some large pieces of the original porcelain tower can still be viewed in the Nanjing Museum today. I also highly reccommend visiting Nanjing, as it has a vast amount of history from both ancient and modern China. The Nanjing Massacre Museum, the old headquarters of the GuoMinDang (which also houses the throne of the TaiPing Rebellion), and the former mansion of Chiang Kai-shek's wife are just a couple of the fascinating historical sights around Nanjing. The food is amazing, too! 3. Guangzhou is my favorite city in all of China. Best food in China, and has some wonderful historical sites, too. You should know however that the Guangzhou-Foshan metro link is not the only one in China that goes between two major cities; Shanghai and Suzhou also have connected metro lines. In short, China is a fantastic country, and yes, the metro systems here are very impressive. As long as I'm not in a major hurry, I love riding the metro to save money.

I’ve heard of Luanda… mainly because I’m a geography nerd and I’ve memorized my world capitals. I also know Chengdu because my airport has flights there. Heard of Nagoya and Chennai too. There are also a lot of flights to Shenzhen and Guangzhou from where I live.

I used to live near Nagoya, it is one of the best cities in Japan. If you ever get the chance I would highly recommend going! Definitely check out Sakae and Osukannon!

Chongqin is also known as the "bridge capitol" and also reffered to City in the mountains normally. Went there now 2 times and its an insane city, Chongqin is nearly as big as Austria and is home ti 32~m people. Cant wait to go back to China once it opens up again. Their nightclub scenes are also insane.

Really wishe a channel like this talked about big cities in Brazil other than São Paulo Rio, or Brazilia and Manaus if they're feeling fancy. Fortaleza and Salvador are massive cities with much more than just tourism, Belo Horizonte is a massive part of the economic trifecta it forms with SP and RJ, and there's also the massive underdiscussed cities in the south of Curitiba and Porto Alegre. Curitiba is at best known as footnote in the history, while Porto Alegre, a city with a metropolitan population of Rome, doesn't get discussed at all. The last 2 are also fascinating because they show actual subtropical climate, getting pretty unique vegetation and geography because of it. There's so much more to Brazil than 2 really big cities

Spent three years living in Chengdu, and spent a considerable amount of time in Chongqing. Also spent some time in Xian, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and several other Chinese cities.

10:09 71 million people in the Pearl River Delta region. To put that into perspective, if it were a country, it would rank 20th in the world in terms of population, behind Germany but ahead of France and the United Kingdom. And this is on a land area comparable to the Netherlands (who themselves have a population of 17 million, which is ALREADY enough to beat out every single US state including New Jersey and Rhode Island - the PRD region therefore has more than four times the average population density of those states). An area slightly larger than Maryland, but with the population of the ONE HUNDRED BIGGEST USA CITIES together. And that's assuming we go with the 71 million people figure in the first place. Wikipedia claims the Pearl River Delta region has a population of 78 million.

I think Chennai's culture is defined more by other things than Movies (Religion, Tradition, Food, etc.). 😊

Maybe because I live in a country just a sea away from China, almost all of the cities seemed familiar for me... Wondered how Kinshasa and Ahmedabad was skipped since most won't even know that Kinshasa is the capital of the DRC and Ahmedabad is something which I don't know much about despite 10 years of living in India. P.s. - just a nitpick, but Chennai is pronounced like "chen-nai" not "che-nai"

Dude, thank you SOO much for literally just putting probably in the title! It annoys me so much when people write "10 things you didn't know about..." and you know half the stuff. It's like, bruh, you don't know who I am, stop assuming stuff about me and go back to your little man cave. But thank you SOOO much for not doing that!!

Chinese cities are really something else. After living in one of the cities on this list, the only city in North America that really feels like a "big city" is New York. I get that L.A. and Mexico City have large populations, but they don't have the "Sky scrapers as far as the eye can see" thing going on. The bus ride from the outskirts to the new town in the city I lived in feels like traveling forward in time by at least a century.

As one of my favorite channels, I was not expecting to see a Civilization V reference in one of your videos at 03:50 hahaha. Love this, and love the video.

Heard of all of these cities, could have told you a thing or two about all but one, and even visited six of them.....but even when the title failed me, I still very much enjoyed this video! Quite a number of mindblowing facts. And it is kind of funny that when I visited some of these cities they didn't even have their metro system yet, but are now among the biggest.

Fun fact: "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" isn't a TMBG original. It was first released in 1953 by a Canadian quartet named "The Four Lads."

I think you should rename this video, either cities US people have never heard of (as African, European, Asian, and Aussie school kids will recognise most of them), or cities people don't know under their current name (as many Chinese cities were called something else outside China, until recently).

Great video and interesting idea! And I always appreciate when you include some history. Another idea: floating cities!

To interpret the title somewhat differently, while people most likely have heard of Essen, Cologne, Dortmund etc. few people probably realize that they make up a continous metropolitan area that with a combined population of over 10 million people is one of the biggest "cities" in the world.

I'm sitting here watching this video from one of the "leading" cities in the west being incredibly jealous of Chinese public transport infrastructure. It's at the same time so ridiculous and incredibly obvious that it would be a great investment for a city

Nagoya is also terra incognita for me. It was a castle town during the Tokugawa shogunate from 1600 to 1853. It became a large industrial center during the Meiji years and this is the city from where Toyota emerged.

I've always wanted to visit Shenzhen, HK, and Congqing. Megacities have always been fascinating to me. As a kid I could never get over how tall the buildings were in NYC. Since leaving it is still interesting to me how small and spread out north American cities are

The migration to Luanda has more to do with the effects of the war. Due to the destruction of much farmland by the Portuguese, as well as the destruction caused by the group unita, many Angolans who relied on subsistence farming had to leave the countryside into Luanda to find a job in service and other such fields. Luanda became a financial engine in the region as a consequence of the migration, not the other way around

Just proof it is not the size of the city that matters when it comes to making a city interesting it is Culture, Geography, and other factors that make a city appealing. Like every year Japan releases its most charming Prefectures and Cities and Hakodate and Sapporo usually top the list, and they are not very large, but everyone in Japan knows them

Good video. I've heard of most of the Chinese cities like Ghouzou, Nanjing , X'ian etc watching travel shows the Travell channel like "Bizarre Foods" with Andrew Zimmern and "No reservations ' with the laye Anthony Bourdain. And I know that in Chinatown in Flushing Queens, NY there's a family run chain of restaurants where the family is from the X'isn province and they're famous for their noodles. Chris from the RU-vid channel Yellow Productions has fine videos on his trips to Japan and has a couple on Nagoya.

I have heard of all of these cities, but your assumption is correct that I did not know more than some surface level info about them. Cool to hear about all the different metros!

I have been to 3 of those cities, Chengdu, Xi'an and Nagoya! Nagoya was probably my least favourite city in Japan, unfortunately its automotive manufacturing makes it very car-centric, something that was not the case in most other Japanese cities. Xi'an is also pretty well known in the tech industry as there is a lot of outsourcing of development and testing moving there.

I only knew about the Chinese cities because some Brazillian football players were in the Chinese Super League. As Brazillian, I learned about Luanda because some friends worked in civil construction.

For Chengdu, the rings circled aren't all the actual ring roads. 1st Ring Road is not in blue, and then your first two inner rings are 2nd ring Road, a two level city street + raised freeway with BRT transit. The next is 3rd ring Road which is also a freeway similar in style to most Texas freeways (4 lanes + 2-3 lane feeder roads). After there are two ring highways (a 3rd is under construction) which are both labeled on the map. Chengdu is a great city for pedestrians, I lived there for about 5 years and loved it, wish the US has something remotely comparable.

For a bit of international relations: Many experts argue that the reason China is putting a squeeze on Hong Kong now, stripping it of free speech and political autonomy, is because Hong Kong is no longer as valuable economically as it once was. In 1997, Hong Kong was everything. But now, as the video states, Shenzen is larger. Beijing has little need to appease Hong Kong or not meddle with it at this point. It's essentially expendable. The situation is a shame.

I’ve been to all the Chinese cities that you listed! I lived in china for 2 years and visited as many cities as I could. Of all the cities that you listed, I loved Nanjing the most, especially as I lived in Shanghai for a year.

I had heard of Shenzen, due to the Strange Parts RU-vid channel (he used to live there). But plenty of cities skipped in your list I had never heard of and know nothing about. Follow up video for the uncultured among us?

I have a suggestion for a video topic: perhaps do a video on how to redevelop large spaces that are not in use anymore (i.e.) airports, malls, stadiums, etc... There are some great examples in Austin like the ACC Highland Campus or the Mueller development that replaced the old airport.

Tianjin is a relatively new city by Chinese standards. Its claim to fame was that it served as the port to the imperial capital of Beijing from the 1600s onwards. Before then it was an insignificant fishing village. It became a major focal point of European expansion during the colonial period in the 1800s and early 1900s as Tianjin was easily accessible by sea, making it easy for European gun boats and ships to land there. Thus European influence arrived first in Tianjin on its way to Beijing.

I don’t think most of people in the West know about the biggest Latin American cities except for Rio and Mexico City.

Excellent video as always! May I ask, where did you get the number 8.8 million for Chicago? City census puts us at around 2.7MM, and the MSA and CSA are between 9.6 and 9.99

Guangzhou is familiar because on some products here in the US they have the region/city and country listed. I've seen this city pop up quite a few times. This video should have been titled "The 10 Biggest *Chinese* Cities You've Never Heard Of (Probably).

I’m from Guangzhou and I’m so excited to see my birth city on the list! I actually think North American audience is generally pretty familiar with Guangzhou because nearly all early Chinese immigrants are from the Guangzhou/Canton region, and the Chinese cuisine North Americans are familiar with is Cantonese food, brought over by these early immigrants. Underrated city (by international standards) to visit, but I think it has some of the best persevered culture in China; the rest of China has their local culture toned down a lot from the revolution and rapid economic growth. Guangzhou is still so quirky and unique

Interesting. I appreciate the attention paid to Chinese cities. Even if I may not want to emulate their governmental system, there’s still something to be learned from them. Also on the topic of relatively unknown cities. I have found a number of times in my travels that I like the “2nd city” or another lesser known large city in a country or state better than the more well known one. I’m wondering if there are any common factors that influence the design and features of these cities. I think it would be a great topic.

I am really surprised to see most of these cities here at all honestly, though, I am a big geography nut and map guy, so... haha. But not knowing of Guangzhou? Or Shenzhen? REALLY?! Baffles me! Absolutely baffles me. I do not understand how those two would be some of the least known in China, let alone the world. Especially being so close to Hong Kong which the international community is obsessed with. It's also painfully close by to Macau, which was a former Portuguese colony, and is directly across the bay from Hong Kong - you literally will pass by, over and look directly at Macau flying in and out of Hong Kong. Wild to me.

I have to point that with all the subways mentioned there is 1 subways system that stands out for having something unique that has been proven to the be the most successful feature in a subway system and yet nobody has copied it. NYC build a 3 and 4 track system while everywhere else is only a 2 track system. The extra tracks are for express trains. In the 3 track system which are found in the outer boroughs uses the 3rd track for express into the city in the mornings and outbound for evening rush hour. The four track system use the 2 extra tracks for express all day each in opposite directions. The success of the express track enabled the city grow rapidly and give NY'ers access to most of the city without the use of a car. To the best of my knowledge no other subway system in the world has copied this.

Chongqing's transit bridge is like an exact replica of the Skytrain Skybridge in Vancouver that was previously the longest transit only suspension bridge in the world.

Would love to see a list of small, but impressive cities, if there is such a thing!

The thing is, there are so many giant cities in China. Every time something internationally noteworthy happens in one of them, I'm like "oh, never heard of that city before, it's probably on the small side" and it turns out to have like 5 million people. Best example is Wuhan, which was obviously covered a lot when 2020 happened. A city many people have never heard about, and it's got 8 million people.

6:08 Nagoya Station (245m, 804ft) is not currently the tallest station in the world. It's Osaka-Abenobashi Station (300m, 984ft) which is known as Abeno Harukas.

Good episode. 1) We moved to Nagoya in 1948 because my father was in the US Air Force and we were a part of the occupation. I was 2 years old at the time so remember practically nothing of our short stay there. 2) The family of one of my uncles had fled Russia and he was born in Harbin. The family moved to Tianjin before coming to the USA in the 1920s. 3) So I know of a couple of the cities but the rest are indeed not familiar.

I'd say Shezhen and Chongqing are pretty well known, alongside with Nanjing. I mean like they have quite a presence. Guangzhou and Tianjin is also pretty well known if ur in the business world, since they're like massive ports for logistics.

How could anyone not know about Nagoya? It's the eastern end of the Kintetsu Empire. You have heard of Kintetsu, right? Other well known cities have also made the list, for some reason. Guangzhou is famous for it's motion picture industry, which is shared with Hong Kong. Also Cantonese food. Nanjing (formerly Nanking) is the former capitol of China. Very historically significant.

Considering Nagoya is the center for car manufacturing, one of the leading exports of Japan, I feel like it is much more well known.

Excellent presentation thank you I visited most of the cities you mention back in the 90s and early 2000s it’s incredible to see how rapidly they have grown . I visited Beijing in the days when there was only one hotel for westerners lol

Cool to learn about a lot of cities I have heard of or met one person from, but never investigated further. Except Nanjing. I feel like everyone knows Nanjing. Kind of important for 20th century history...

Due to Turkish citizens officially residing elsewhere but informally living in Istanbul, and millions of refugees, both of which are not counted in the official counts, Istanbul likely has a population of 19-20 million, I'd reckon most residents would estimate. Just wanted to append that about the initial portion of the video.

Loved this video. Please do more like it in the future.

People who work with portable generators or in the construction industry might know of Chongqing. It's where a lot of small engine manufacturers are headquartered such as Lifan and Loncin and the name Chongqing is often labeled on the engines.