the White Elephant building is cool as hell. because chongqing has no level surfaces, the ground floor on one side of the building is like seven stories up from the ground floor on the river side. you climb up and down school building-style stairwells that twirl around each other like a very low-poly double helix. each floor has apartments converted to coffee shops and majiang dens (in CQ and sichuan they play with giant majiang tiles the size of cigarette packs for some reason. pretty cool).

it's got a rustic 80s concrete-and-tile charm like many old buildings in china, just bigger and weirder. like a less dystopian version of mirador mansion/chongqing mansions in hong kong.