Top 10 Things to Do in Chengdu

The restored Ming and Qing Dynasty commercial street beside Wuhou Shrine is a beautifully atmospheric lane of wooden storefronts selling Sichuan opera masks, hand-stitched pandas, and the city's best rabbit heads — Chengdu's most photogenic historical shopping street.

Chengdu's signature contribution to world cuisine is the bubbling, numbing-spicy broth of the Sichuan hotpot — loaded with thinly sliced meats, offal, tofu, and vegetables, dipped in sesame paste, and eaten communally at a table raucous with conversation.

The only temple in China that jointly venerates a ruler (Liu Bei of the Shu Han kingdom) and his chancellor (Zhuge Liang, the legendary strategist), this peaceful complex of vermillion halls, ancient cypresses, and lotus ponds is one of Chengdu's oldest sites.

Three parallel Qing Dynasty alleyways — Wide, Narrow, and Well — have been lovingly restored into a living district of courtyard cafes, Sichuan snack stalls, folk-craft shops, and hidden bars that preserve the texture of old Chengdu neighbourhood life.

The traditional bamboo tea chairs of People's Park fill every afternoon with retirees playing mahjong, ear-cleaners offering their services, and anyone who understands that sitting with a pot of jasmine tea for three hours is not wasting time but living it.

The extraordinary art of bian lian — performers swapping elaborately painted masks in a fraction of a second by an apparently magical technique — is Sichuan opera's most famous trick and best seen at the Shufeng Yayun teahouse with dinner included.

The reconstructed cottage and garden where Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu lived in exile for four years (759–763 AD) and wrote over 240 poems is now a tranquil museum-park — a pilgrimage site for lovers of Chinese literature in a city that takes its poets seriously.

An hour north of Chengdu, the Bronze Age Sanxingdui ruins have yielded the most enigmatic artefacts in Chinese archaeology — giant bronze masks with protruding eyes, gold-leaf sceptres, and jade objects from a civilisation that wrote no script and left no successor.

Two hours south of Chengdu, the 71-metre Tang Dynasty stone Buddha carved from a cliff above the confluence of three rivers is the largest stone Buddha on Earth — serene, vast, and more emotionally affecting than any photograph prepares you for.

The restored Ming and Qing Dynasty commercial street beside Wuhou Shrine is a beautifully atmospheric lane of wooden storefronts selling Sichuan opera masks, hand-stitched pandas, and the city's best rabbit heads — Chengdu's most photogenic historical shopping street.

Chengdu's signature contribution to world cuisine is the bubbling, numbing-spicy broth of the Sichuan hotpot — loaded with thinly sliced meats, offal, tofu, and vegetables, dipped in sesame paste, and eaten communally at a table raucous with conversation.

The only temple in China that jointly venerates a ruler (Liu Bei of the Shu Han kingdom) and his chancellor (Zhuge Liang, the legendary strategist), this peaceful complex of vermillion halls, ancient cypresses, and lotus ponds is one of Chengdu's oldest sites.

Three parallel Qing Dynasty alleyways — Wide, Narrow, and Well — have been lovingly restored into a living district of courtyard cafes, Sichuan snack stalls, folk-craft shops, and hidden bars that preserve the texture of old Chengdu neighbourhood life.

The traditional bamboo tea chairs of People's Park fill every afternoon with retirees playing mahjong, ear-cleaners offering their services, and anyone who understands that sitting with a pot of jasmine tea for three hours is not wasting time but living it.

The extraordinary art of bian lian — performers swapping elaborately painted masks in a fraction of a second by an apparently magical technique — is Sichuan opera's most famous trick and best seen at the Shufeng Yayun teahouse with dinner included.

The reconstructed cottage and garden where Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu lived in exile for four years (759–763 AD) and wrote over 240 poems is now a tranquil museum-park — a pilgrimage site for lovers of Chinese literature in a city that takes its poets seriously.

An hour north of Chengdu, the Bronze Age Sanxingdui ruins have yielded the most enigmatic artefacts in Chinese archaeology — giant bronze masks with protruding eyes, gold-leaf sceptres, and jade objects from a civilisation that wrote no script and left no successor.

Two hours south of Chengdu, the 71-metre Tang Dynasty stone Buddha carved from a cliff above the confluence of three rivers is the largest stone Buddha on Earth — serene, vast, and more emotionally affecting than any photograph prepares you for.