Chongqing - Nowadays, when netizens talk about "618" to most of China's internet-savvy younger generation, they immediately think of the mid-year online shopping festival, which sees trillions of yuan worth of goods being ordered on a single day. However, for many local citizens, the phrase bears much more significant meanings to it -- the date on which Chongqing was officially designated as China's fourth municipality directly under the Central government after Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin.

When you look at an ordinary-scaled map of the People's Republic of China, there's little chance that you could find any other city that has the size of Chongqing -- Shanghai is generally considered as the biggest city in China, but if you compared it to Chongqing, it's actually not that big anymore. As a provincial-level municipality, Chongqing boasts an astounding 82,000-square-kilometer area and a whopping population of more than 32 million people. There are a total of 26 districts, eight counties, and four ethnic minority autonomous counties currently under the administration of the municipal government.

Being a strategic linking node in the Belt and Road Initiative, the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the Western China Development Plan, the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, and the Sino-Singapore Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity, Chongqing enjoys unique geographical advantages and some of the best policy-related benefits in international trade and cooperation.

In a mere 24 years, Chongqing has again and again proven to the world its economic strength and development potential, devoting unremittingly great efforts to building itself into an inland highland for reform and opening up. Currently, the city ranks first in the Central and Western Cities Comprehensive Development Indicator chart, topping the other growth engines like Wushan and Chengdu cities.

Today, June 18, 2021, marks the 24th anniversary of the establishment of Chongqing as the country's youngest municipality, which has earned a lot of national and international attention for its tremendous social progress and economic achievements over the past two decades.

Tens of millions of people, including myself -- I was bored and raised in suburban Chongqing and went to Guangzhou for college and then spent two more years working in Shenzhen before finally coming back -- have stopped by and fallen in love with the city, at first sight, bestowing upon it dozens of titles, nicknames, and terms of endearment, such as "Mountain City," "Chinese Capital of Bridge," "Global Capital of Hot Spring,"  "Oriental Capital of Fog," "Cyberpunk City," "Eight-Dimensional City," and "Internet Celebrity City" among many others.

However, my personal best description of Chongqing is the "City of Mountains and Rivers, Land of Beauties and Blessing," which is the phrase that I coined myself and have been more than frequently using in my news articles and videos, as a substitute to the officially endorsed translation of "A Tour in Chongqing, A Gain in Vision."

But no matter how many titles you think Chongqing deserves, there's one that we should all remember today: one of China's four municipalities directly under the Central government.