Erik Nilsson joins the bangbang army and hops on hogs with the elderly China Knights motorcycle club to discover how Chongqing has blazed paths to tame its infamously hilly terrain.

Editor's Note: This is Part 5 of the six-part Yangtze-diaries series based on journalist Erik Nilsson's recent 35-day, 2,000-kilometer journey to 11 cities to discover how the Yangtze River Economic Belt has transformed over the 40 years since the reform and opening-up. Scan the code to watch the video.

I was recently recruited into the bangbang army and rode with a motorcycle club of grandpas－and a few grannies－in Chongqing.

It was with a bamboo pole on my back and later, sitting on the back of a retiree's hog, that I came to understand how the notoriously hilly city has improved its infrastructure.

The bangbang porters, who've carried loads slung from shoulder poles uphill for as long as anyone can recall, are vanishing as Chongqing's traffic and economy develop, hand-in-hand.

The mountainous terrain conjured and forged the bangbang. They've been not only necessary to, but also icons of, the city since time immemorial.

I was the youngest among their ranks by many years.

"We're all in our 50s and 60s," bangbang porter Li Chuanshu told me, as I carried a load alongside him.

"No young people want to do this." He's 65.

I found it tricky to balance the boxes dangling from either end of my bamboo pole.

They wobbled－and, consequently, so did I. I swayed to and fro as much as I walked forward at first, as if drunk.

The treacherous topography had long made it tricky to not only go up and down slopes but also to move forward in any cardinal direction－not just on foot as a fulcrum for swaying boxes but even behind the steering wheel of a car.

It used to take 26 hours to drive from downtown to Qianjiang district. It now takes only four hours from the city center to the municipality's farthest edges.

This makes it easier for the China Knights motorcycle club to ride to any corner of the nation－and beyond, to such countries as Russia, Laos and Myanmar.

The group greeted me on the side of a highway by revving their engines. The grumbling drone was like a swarm of giant wasps. They bellowed hellos like feuding lions, roaring in thickly accented Mandarin before I joined them for a joyride.

These elderly bikers live a kinetic existence. They are, on average, older than the bangbang－the youngest is 61, and the eldest 87－but they have thrived as the bangbang have become increasingly obsolete.

The ride reminded me of friends from Chongqing, who have told me they never learned to ride bicycles because of the precipitous landscape.

That makes sense－unless you have a motor and good roads.

Getting around the city can prove a unique experience. I first hopped on one of downtown Chongqing's two cross-river cableways that were built in 1986.

Soon after, I took a light-rail train that emerges from subterranean tunnels to grace mountaintops before blasting through a building, whooshing in one side and out the other.

The area beneath where the train pierces the high rise is a tourist attraction, replete with hillside tile mosaics. Visitors congregate below to shoot photos and videos.

Even on foot, the undulating terrain sometimes means walking straight from a building's first floor to the adjacent building's seventh floor without going up or down any stairs.

I also rode the 112-meter, underground Lianglukou Huangguan Escalator, which is said to be Asia's longest.

However, transportation within Chongqing has improved in pace with its connectivity to the outside. A ring road links downtown to the suburbs, while a highway connects the municipality with Shanghai.

I also visited the Yangtze's largest inland port, which handled 13 million tons of cargo last year. It's linked to a new trans-Eurasian railway, creating an "intersection of the Belt and Road and the Yangtze". I hopped aboard and rode along with the conductors for a few stops.

The Yangtze itself is now more easily traversed, thanks to the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei province's Yichang, from where I traveled to Chongqing.

"Before, there were rocks near the water's surface," a cargo-ship captain told me as we prepared to pass through the locks, rising 40 stories aboard his boat.

"It was dangerous. Now, the water flows high above the boulders. So, we don't have to worry about hitting them."

The pulleys groaned and echoed loudly. The dam is a place of haunting beauty, not only visually but also acoustically.

Its massiveness makes it an amphitheater that endows every sound with an enhanced decibel count and hyperactive reverb.

The slaps of a net hitting the water as a man scooped litter from the surface dozens of meters below me sounded like fireworks.

The dam's gray, artificial geometry stood in stark and splendid contrast to the naturally rendered, pastel squiggles of the mountain ranges' pinnacles that painted the horizons.

The peaks peeked faintly above the mist like periscopes.

Yichang's man-made marvel and natural splendor lure tourists from every corner of the planet.

I spent the night before aboard a Yangtze cruise ship in the city. The mirror images of skyscrapers sparkled like glittering ghosts on the ripples of the river as the boat slipped beneath vibrantly colored, illuminated bridges that also cast multihued, inverse shadows on its surface.

Indeed, the journey showed me how China is overcoming transportation roadblocks posed by mountains that jut into the sky and boulders hiding just beneath the water.

It has enabled and enhanced travel on wheels and waves, train tracks and ship locks－and, sometimes, even by foot.