Chengdu

Chengdu is the city people expect to like and then like more than they expected. It is flat, green and unhurried by Chinese mega-city standards, organised around food, tea and sitting down. It is also the gateway to western China, which is why so many itineraries pass through it rather than stopping.

Three days is the honest minimum. The pandas take a morning, the city takes a day, and Leshan is a long day trip worth adding if you have a fourth.

The pandas own your morning

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is why most people come, and the timing is not negotiable. Pandas are active only in the cool early morning; by mid-morning they are asleep and the base becomes a walk through empty enclosures with a crowd in it. Book the morning slot, arrive for opening at about 07:30, and head straight for the nursery and the sub-adult enclosures before the tour groups find them.

If you have one morning in Chengdu and you spend it in bed, you have wasted the trip. This is the one sight in the city where the schedule matters more than the ticket.

The rest of the city, and what to skip

Jinli and the Wide and Narrow Alleys are the polished, rebuilt version of old Chengdu — lanterns, snacks, souvenir shops. They are pleasant after dark and entirely skippable at noon. Wuhou Shrine is the more substantial stop of the cluster.

The better Chengdu day is unstructured: a teahouse in the morning, a market, a long lunch, hotpot or chuanchuan in the evening. Sichuan food here is not the sweetened, toned-down version served abroad, and the local default is spicier than most visitors expect — ask for less heat if you need to, and nobody will be offended.

Getting out of the city

Leshan’s Giant Buddha is a full day from Chengdu, and the queues at the cliff steps are the bottleneck rather than the drive. Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong, three to four days further out, are the reason some travellers give Sichuan a week; treat them as a separate trip, not a day excursion.