Chengdu 成都

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan and the most relaxed big city in China. It is a place with an explicitly stated civic philosophy —bashi, roughly “comfortable, sorted” — and it shows in the teahouses full of people at 3 pm on a Tuesday, in the bamboo chairs, in the fact that the city has more teahouses than Starbucks has anywhere. It is also the panda capital, the gateway to Tibetan Sichuan and Jiuzhaigou, and the single best city in China for eating. Two or three days; more if you are using it as a base.

• Region South-west China
• Suggested stay 2–3 days
• Best season March–May and September–November
• Getting there Tianfu (TFU) + Shuangliu (CTU) airports; high-speed rail 3 h from Xi’an, 7 h from Beijing

Chengdu sits on the western edge of the Sichuan Basin, a fertile red-soil bowl ringed by mountains, 500 m above sea level and about 100 km from the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The climate is the defining feature: humid, grey, still, and famous for a sky that stays overcast for weeks — locals say the sun is a rare event worth celebrating.Getting there: Tianfu (TFU) and Shuangliu (CTU) airports, both on metro line 10; high-speed rail 3 h from Xi’an, 7 h from Beijing, 1.5 h from Chongqing. Chengdu is a 240-hour transit port.

• Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding — go at opening (07:30) when the pandas are actually awake and eating; by 10:00 they are sleeping balls of fur.
• People’s Park and theHeming teahouse — the canonical Chengdu afternoon: bamboo chair, ¥20 tea, ear-cleaning man with his tuning fork, a crowd of retirees.
• Wuhou Shrine & Jinli Street — a memorial temple to the Three Kingdoms strategist Zhuge Liang, plus an old-street food and craft bazaar next door.
• Wenshu Monastery — a working Tang-founded monastery with a vegetarian restaurant and a teahouse courtyard.
• Kuanzhai Xiangzi (“wide and narrow alleys”) — restored Qing courtyards, touristic but pretty, and good for an evening.
• Dujiangyan (2,200-year-old irrigation system still in use) andMount Qingcheng (Taoist temples in cloud forest) — easy day trips.

Chengdu has been the capital of the Shu kingdom and of several regional dynasties for over 2,300 years with almost no interruption — the name has never changed. The Dujiangyan irrigation system, built in 256 BCE and still watering the plain, is why the basin could feed an empire. In the Three Kingdoms period (3rd century) Shu was one of the three rival states and Zhuge Liang is still a local hero. Sichuan was a Ming-era centre of printing and poetry (the Tang poet Du Fu wrote some of his best work in his thatched cottage here). The province’s distinct identity — dialect, food, temperament — has never fully merged with the rest of China.

Chengdu culture is teahouse culture. The city has thousands of them, from ¥15 bamboo-chair affairs in parks to lakeside courtyards; mahjong is played for small stakes everywhere, and the ear-cleaning (cai er) professionals with their feathered tools are a genuinely local institution. Sichuanese speak a Southwestern Mandarin dialect with the sharpest humour in China — self-deprecating, slangy, quick. The city is famously tolerant, famously gay-friendly (a large and visible scene), and famously unbothered: people here are not in a hurry, and the number one weekend activity is driving out to the countryside to eat and play cards.

Sichuan food is not just chilli — it ismala, the numbing-plus-hot combination of Sichuan peppercorn and chilli, and it is one of the great regional cuisines of the world. Eat:hotpot (order theyuanyang half-spicy half-mild pot),mapo tofu,twice-cooked pork,fish-fragrant aubergine (no fish),kung pao chicken (nothing like the Western version),dandan noodles,chuan chuan xiang (skewers), andstreet breakfast buns. Take home:Sichuan pepper,pixian chilli bean paste,tea from Mengding Mountain,Shu brocade, andpanda everything.

Allow 2–3 days. Day 1: pandas at opening, People’s Park teahouse in the afternoon, hotpot at night. Day 2: Wuhou Shrine, Jinli, Wenshu Monastery, Kuanzhai Xiangzi. Day 3: Dujiangyan and Mount Qingcheng, or a side trip to Leshan’s giant Buddha (1 h by train).Timing: spring and autumn; summer is hot and sticky, winter is mild but sunless.Mistakes: arriving at the panda base at 10 am; eating only hotpot (Sichuan cuisine is enormous); and skipping Chongqing, which is 90 minutes away and completely different.