After four busy days cruising the Yangtze from Yichang to Chongqing, I continued to Chengdu for two days. And there was one very clear reason why Chengdu had been on my China itinerary from the beginning:
pandas! 🐼
Pandas everywhere
But Chengdu turned out to offer much more than its most famous residents.
In just two days, I carved my Chinese name into a traditional seal, stumbled across a bargain in a tea shop, explored Wuhou Shrine and Jinli Old Street and, of course, had to try hot pot.
Even my accommodation added to the experience. My hotel was only about five minutes' walk from Wuhou Shrine and designed as a traditional Chinese hotel, complete with historic-style beds. After four nights on the ship, it was a fun change and fitted perfectly with the historic surroundings.
The reason I came: Pandas! 🐼
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding was the main reason I had put Chengdu on my itinerary in the first place.
The Panda Base was founded in 1987 and has developed into one of the world's most important centres for giant panda conservation and breeding. Today, its core area covers around 238 hectares.
But this isn't simply a zoo full of pandas: the base combines breeding and conservation with scientific research, education and the protection of other rare Chinese species such as the red panda.
Its research programme covers areas including genetics, reproduction, disease prevention and conservation ecology, and the work carried out here has played an important role in increasing the captive giant panda population.
And then, of course, there are the pandas themselves.
One of the biggest celebrities is Hua Hua, a female giant panda who has become enormously popular in China. Seeing her can require serious dedication: visitors start queuing early and waits can stretch to hours.
I decided that spending around two hours in a queue to see one particular panda was a little too much, especially when there were plenty of other pandas to see throughout the enormous park. I know people who did queue that long for Hua Hua, though, so clearly not everyone shares my priorities!
Instead, I spent my time exploring the different enclosures and watching pandas eat, climb, wander around and—unsurprisingly—sleep.
Timing definitely matters. Pandas tend to be more active earlier in the day, particularly around feeding time. Later, there's a good chance you'll mainly be admiring sleeping black-and-white bundles of fur.
For me, seeing the pandas was one of the highlights of my entire China trip and easily justified coming to Chengdu.
Giving my Chinese name an official stamp
One of my favourite souvenirs from Chengdu was something much more personal than the usual magnet or postcard: a seal carved with my Chinese name.
I'd seen seals repeatedly in Chinese movies, particularly historical ones, where they often carry enormous importance. An official document isn't really official until the right seal has been stamped onto it. That made me curious about having one of my own.
Chinese seals have been used for thousands of years as signatures and marks of authority on documents, calligraphy and works of art. Instead of signing your name, the carved characters are pressed into red seal paste and stamped onto the paper.
So when I had the chance to carve a seal with my own Chinese name in Chengdu, I couldn't resist.
Later in my trip, the significance of seals became even clearer when I visited the Shanghai Museum and saw numerous historic examples there. Suddenly my little Chengdu souvenir had a much bigger cultural context.
Eight tea cups, two pots and a bargain bin
I hadn't actually planned a major tea-shopping expedition. Instead, I stumbled across what can probably best be described as a Chinese tea ware bargain bin.
Rather than neat matching sets, there were individual cups, pots and other pieces to dig through. The challenge was to search through everything, find pieces I liked and then mix and match them into my own collection.
Naturally, I got carried away. By the time I finished, I had bought eight tea cups, two teapots and a tea container.
The total price? 95 Yuan – about €11.
Considering how much tea ware I'd somehow accumulated, this may have been one of my best bargains in China. The only remaining challenge was figuring out how to get everything home without breaking it.
Wuhou Shrine and Jinli Old Street
Staying just five minutes away made Wuhou Shrine an obvious stop.
The temple complex is closely associated with Zhuge Liang, the famous military strategist and statesman of the Three Kingdoms period, as well as Liu Bei, emperor of Shu Han. I had already encountered Liu Bei's story at White Emperor City during my Yangtze cruise, so it was interesting to pick up the historical thread again hundreds of kilometres further west.
Wuhou Shrine
Right next door is Jinli Old Street, one of Chengdu's best-known pedestrian streets. Red lanterns, traditional-style wooden buildings, food stalls, souvenir shops and small courtyards make it a fun place to wander, particularly towards the evening.
Is it touristy? Definitely.
Did that stop me from enjoying it? Not at all.
Hot pot – without the Sichuan fire 🔥
There was one obvious culinary problem with visiting Chengdu: I can't eat spicy food.
That makes traditional Sichuan hot pot, famous for its chilli and numbing Sichuan peppercorns, something of a challenge.
Fortunately, hot pot doesn't automatically have to mean setting your mouth on fire. I opted for a non-Sichuan, non-spicy hot pot, which meant I could still enjoy the experience of cooking vegetables, meat and other ingredients in the bubbling broth at the table without spending the rest of the evening regretting my decisions.
Perhaps it wasn't the most authentic Chengdu hot pot experience, but it was definitely the right one for me.
Two days – enough?
Two days in Chengdu went by very quickly. I came primarily for the pandas, but ended up with a much broader mix of experiences: history at Wuhou Shrine, red lanterns at Jinli, my own Chinese seal, an unexpectedly large collection of tea ware and a hot pot that I could actually eat.
Could I have stayed longer? Definitely. But on a journey through China, choices have to be made.
For me, the pandas alone justified putting Chengdu on the route. Everything else was a bonus—and somehow I left with eight tea cups, two teapots, a tea container and my own Chinese seal in my luggage and lots of Panda souvenirs.
Next stop: Guilin, where it was time to leave temples, pandas and megacities behind and discover some of China's most famous landscapes.
