The center of downtown Chongqing. Jiefangbei, or the PeopleAs Liberation Monument, formerly known as the Monument of Victory in the War of Resistance (WW2), is a 27.5 meter high structure. Around the monument is a broad, paved pedestrian square lined by numerous glassy office skyscrapers and highrise hotels, reminiscent of New York’s Times Square or Tokyo’s Shibuya district. ”’Jiefangbei Shopping Square”’, completed in 1997, has a 400 by 350 meter footprint. Around the square are more than 3,000 stores of various kinds, including more than two dozen large malls and shopping centers, dozens of star-graded hotels, and offices such as banks, stock markets, trade and finance companies, postal and telecommunication services, and places of entertainment.