Video shows what it's like to use public transit in 'gloriously chaotic' city: 'One wrong turn ... and you're cooked'

Mid-century artist M.C. Escher would feel right at home in China's labyrinth-like, multi-leveled Chongqing city.  

A scene of the metropolis' layered maze of highways shared in a video clip by Instagrammer Dylan Page (@dylanpage.ning) brings to mind Escher's "Relativity." It's a drawing of a complex network of staircases with no sense of direction. 

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"One wrong turn on these roads and you're cooked," the Instagrammer says in the clip, which dubs Chongqing as Earth's "craziest city."

Page's recent viral post showcases much more of the mind-blowing Chinese cityscape. 

In fact, the highway knot is perhaps the least hard-to-believe part of the architecture and infrastructure. That's partly because the city was built into a mountainous landscape. What's more, deep, multi-story bunkers — remnants from World War II — have been transformed into useful features of the city, according to Page and Architectural Digest. 

The clip shows trains traveling through buildings, vehicles on highly suspended bridges, and parking garages that are more than 1,000 feet underground, as other spectacles. 

Perhaps most confusing is the complex levels that form the city. When visitors think they have taken an elevator stories above the ground, they turn a corner only to find that they are, in fact, back on terra firma. 

And Chongqing's recesses are inspiring others to document their journeys. 

"The experience of navigating the city felt like being thrust into a cross between the movie 'Inception' and a game of snakes and ladders. In the end, I gave up on trying to navigate, and let this gloriously chaotic place swallow me into its concrete ravines," the Guardian's Oliver Wainwright wrote after a visit. 

How do you feel about public transportation options near you? Fantastic 😎 Could be better 🤔 Horrible 😠 I don't know or care 🤷 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

The newspaper reported the city's metropolitan population at 32 million people. But the inhabitant count is now periodically added to by tourists, including Page and Wainwright. 

It's an example of how architecture can be incorporated into natural landscapes and of giving new purpose to outdated structures, as is the case with Chongqing's wartime bunkers. 

Creative planners can provide great value, especially when buildings use smart designs to maximize natural breezes and sunlight. The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School in the Indian desert is an example of using architectural geometry to help sustainably cool the facility with energy-saving potential. 

Natural temperature control can also help to reduce the production of heat-trapping air pollution. The lung-troubling gases are inhaled by most of the planet's population, according to the World Health Organization. 

At Chongqing, public transit and other useful features — like outdoor exercise machines — are built into the cityscape, providing a new experience around every turn, as evidenced by Page's clip. 

"The Lord of the Rings" fans might find comparisons with the tall, tiered design of the fictional Minas Tirith, which was built into a mountain and sacked by orcs, as the story goes. 

One commenter on Page's post had a reasonable concern for Chongqing's stacked design, sans stone-throwing trolls. 

"So once it crumbles it will come down hard," the viewer wrote. 

Another viewer's take was more optimistic: "Living in the future!"

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