is "the biggest city you've never heard of" the official slogan of chongqing? whenever i see an article using that phrase i say out loud "chongqing." every article about chongqing uses that line. i've heard of it already!!!
besides, haven't a lot of people heard of it? i mean, they may not know it's the name of a city in china but there are a ton of chinese restaurants with names that are variations of "chung king." (szechuan is one of the more popular types of chinese food in the u.s. it's not surprising that the region's biggest city comes up a lot in restaurant names). if you just spelled "chongqing" a little differently, i'm sure lots of people would at least vaguely recognize the name. but that would spoil the lede.
i wonder what the largest city i have never heard of is. looking down this list it's tianjin, which is arguably bigger than chongqing (depending if you use the metro area number or the administrative area population). but my googling says that only this guy uses the "biggest city you've never heard of" phrase about tianjin (see right margin under "CONTACT"). also now i've heard of it.
so i guess the biggest city i've now never heard of is Hangzhou. except i've heard of that now too.
dammit.
