Last week’s spring break holiday for my kid’s school finally gave us a chance to visit other parts of China after three years of being Beijing-bound. My family chose to make a trip to Chengdu, and I wanted to share our discovery of the city’s attractions and which ones were the most kid-friendly and worth your time.

Getting there: We chose to travel by train in a perhaps pointless act of being eco-friendly, and realized that train journeys are quite enjoyable, aside from the hardly-edible microwave meals. The kids had a really good time reading, playing and watching the scenery on the 7.5-hour ride. While I would say that 5 hours is probably the maximum I would prefer for a train trip, my kid said he would rather take the train than the plane if given the choice again!

Some general notes about Chengdu: The city is quite old and looks it. While the downtown Taikooli area is more modern, the rest of the city seemed to be in a state or disrepair and partial abandonment. Our hotel overlooked a large derelict stadium that looked like it was in the midst of being torn down, but we never heard nor saw the construction machines at work. That said, the age of the city gave it a rustic charm that added to its laid-back feel as we walked the wide pavements and often empty streets.

Food: The famous delicacy in the region is rabbit. Amidst the many stalls selling rabbit’s head and rabbit jerky, we read a morbid sign that said “No Rabbit Leaves Chengdu Alive”. Another bizarre souvenir is “dog poop candy” which is so named because of its brown color and texture but rest assured it’s made from nuts and sugar. Supposedly it gives you “dog poop luck” which is the opposite of what it sounds like.

Now let’s dive into Chengdu’s attractions themselves!

1. Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

Within a 30-minute drive northeast of the city lies Chengdu’s biggest attraction – the Giant Panda Research Base. We set off at 7am on a work day, hoping to avoid the crowds by arriving right at opening time (7.30am) but were still beat by hundreds of panda-fanatics. There are bilingual tour services available for a small fee of RMB 100, but we didn’t see the need since there were signs in English at each enclosure. Considering the Base covers an area of 165 acres, you can easily spend an entire day there just exploring its many panda enclosures and natural sights – it also has lakes where you can observe different birds and other wildlife (squirrels). The park guide says it takes about 3 hours to walk and 1-2 hours by bus, but with kids and the jostling crowd, we barely made it past the lake in that time on foot. Fair warning: Our kids were all panda-ed out by the tenth panda enclosure and we left shortly after noon.

PRO TIPS: Bring your own snacks because they mostly sell ice cream, sweet drinks and rabbit/beef jerky at the snack booths around the park. Less crowded sit-down restaurants are mostly in the east of the park near the Swan Lake. The cleanest and least crowded toilet we found was also to the east of the park right across from the Panda Museum.

2. Tianfu Square, People’s Park, and Du Fu Thatched Cottage

Of these three popular attractions within Chengdu city, Du Fu Thatched Cottage would be our pick. The home of famous Chinese poet Du Fu, the sprawling grounds are more than just a walk in the park. With beautiful orchid and bonsai gardens, historical exhibits and statues, and even a museum with the original excavation findings, this park can be an entire afternoon event, especially if you pack a picnic basket to enjoy at one of the many gazebos within.

Tianfu Spare and People’s Park are within walking distance of each other and worth a quick look if you like huge statues of Mao and monuments to soldiers and trains. Warning: The “Kids playground” in People’s Park is a mini amusement park featuring carnival-esque rides like bumper cars and merry-go-rounds.

3. Wide Narrow Alley and Jinli Old Street

Both of these attractions are touted as “charming authentic shopping alleys” and are almost always overrun by tourists. Still, Jinli Old Street was more authentic and interesting to us – with its location being right next to Wuhou Monastery and in the Tibetan quarter of the city, which offers entire streets of giant Buddhas and Tibetan restaurants, as well as a variety of shops. We saw all manner of shops selling everything from hand-embroidered panda T-shirts to fungus to hand-carved donkey-skin shadow puppets. This was also where we finally decided to catch another Chengdu special – the face-changing opera. Even though what we watched was a watered-down 15 minute version of this usually hour-long performance, it was definitely one of the highlights of our Chengdu visit! Not only the kids, but even us adults were quite baffled as to how the performer changed the masks in an instant, like magic.

4. Qingchengshan World heritage Site

We climbed a mountain! There was a mini-bus, a gondola, and a ferry involved, but by golly we did it! The kids climbed over 10,000 vertical steps to one of the 300 peaks of Qingchengshan – we reached over 1000m above sea level! But the best part? We didn’t even break a sweat because of Chengdu’s incredible climate. From our local driver we learned that Chengdu is hailed as “paradise on Earth,” and that if celestial beings were to come down from heaven, they would visit Chengdu. I can believe it – the temperature stays between 15 and 25 degrees for most of the year, and it rains just enough for it to be humid without you feeling it.

PRO TIP: The ticket office will offer you a map which, while very pretty, is practically useless. Once you get off the gondola further up the mountain, follow the steps to weave through several temples before you get to the highest one. The peak we reached is not a true peak that offers you a towering view. In fact, since you’re above the clouds, you probably won’t see anything (We didn’t). But we had the satisfaction of knowing we climbed all the way!

The last ferry and shuttle bus end their services by 6pm so make sure you are well on your way down before then! The shops along the way also close around 5.30pm, so if you want to buy any overpriced souvenirs, make sure you do so before then!

Images: Vivienne Tseng-Rush, Shu Qi

After two months of inactivity, I resumed exploring Beijing’s regional restaurants by revisiting a very familiar culinary style: Chengdu cuisine. That’s how I found myself peering up at an unassuming-looking hotel northeast of Jingshan Park on Saturday evening.

Both of my parents are of Sichuanese descent; my mom was born and raised in Chongqing while my dad’s grandfather migrated to Yunnan as a young man. We’ve visited extended family in Chengdu several times over the years; some of my fondest memories involve sampling the city’s famous xiaochi (snacks) in Jinli, a restored commercial street with restaurants bedecked in red lanterns.

I was eager to see how well the Chengdu zhujingban (Chinese for “representative office restaurant”) would recreate long-time favorites like mapo doufu, suancai yu, dandan mian, and tangyuan.

The restaurant is located at the back of the Shudu Hotel, just after a right turn at the lobby and a long corridor. The dining room was surprisingly small; it contained maybe 13 tables at most. We didn’t have a reservation, so it took a bit of haggling and reshuffling to seat our table of nine. “Next time, you should really reserve,” said one of the servers, not unkindly.

The food
We had a mix of spice eaters and non-spice eaters, vegetarians and omnivores, low-carb and high-carb eaters (i.e. Germans). Here are some of the dishes we ordered:

Cold dishes:

• “Mouth-watering” chicken 口水鸡 koushui ji

Hot dishes:

• Hot and sour fish with pickled vegetables 酸菜鱼 suancai yu
• Mapo tofu (vegetarian and regular versions) 麻婆豆腐 mapo doufu
• Stir-fried pea shoots 炝炒豌豆尖 qiangchao wandoujian
• Beef in “red soup” (a sea of spice, basically) 红汤牛肉 hongtang niurou
• Hotplate tofu 石板豆腐 shiban doufu
• Stir-fried diced eggplant 炒茄丁 chao qie ding
• Cauliflower and pork slices (I didn’t take down the Chinese name for this dish, but it’ll be something like 花菜炒猪肉 huacai chao zhurou)

Xiaochi:

• Dandan noodles 担担面 dandan mian
• Spicy wonton 红油抄手 hongyou chaoshou
• Tangyuan with fermented glutinous rice 醪糟汤圆 laozao tangyuan

My favorite was the suancai yu; for only RMB 68, you get a massive bowl filled with tender sliced fish and a slightly sour broth that warms the belly all the way through.

The mapo doufu was firm and fragrant, with just a hint of mala spice – not at all goopy or heavy.

I also enjoyed the tangyuan; instead of the usual hot water, they was served in a clear, lightly sweetened soup with laozao, a type of fermented rice commonly seen in Sichuan and Yunnan. The little bowl brought back memories of my maternal grandmother filling rows of homemade tangyuan with sesame paste in the kitchen.

As a pescetarian, I didn’t try any of the meat dishes but both the hongtang beef and the koushui ji got the seal of approval.

The only real disappointment was the dandan mian. Instead of giving off an aromatic heat, the flavors were underdeveloped and the noodles themselves were limp and spongy.

In total, the bill came to RMB 565 for nine people – not bad at all. Though there were a few hiccups with the service – a request for a vegetarian modification forgotten, a lengthy wait for the bill, confusion over change – the wait staff was friendly and accommodating. There were clean squat bathrooms with hand soap on the first floor of the hotel, but no toilet paper.

When the weather gets warmer, a visit to the Chengdu zhujingban would be the perfect way to conclude a day trip to Jingshan Park or Beihai Park. Though some accommodation can be made with spice levels, the restaurant is better-suited to older and more adventurous kids and visitors.

Chengdu Representative Office Restaurant 成都驻京办餐厅
Daily 7-9am (breakfast), 11am-2pm (lunch), 5-9pm (dinner. 1/F, Shudu Hotel, 30 Shatan Houjie, Dongcheng District (6403 4440 ext 2241) 东城区沙滩后街30号蜀都宾馆1层

Sijia Chen is a contributing editor at beijingkids and a freelance writer specializing in parenting, education, travel, environment, and culture. Her work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, The Independent, Midnight Poutine, Rover Arts, and more. Follow her on Twitter at @sijiawrites or email her at sijiachen@beijing-kids.com.

Photos: Sijia Chen

The Giant Panda Reserve Centre in Sichuan focuses on panda breeding and bamboo ecology. The Center was founded with assistance from World Wildlife Fund. It takes care of pandas in three situations: pandas brought up from captive breeding, pandas somehow dispersed from their packs, and pandas rescued from injury and have lost the ability to survive in nature.  The goal is to release the pandas into the wild.  

My family signed up for to be volunteers at the Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding Center. 

At the start of our “job”, we dropped by at the “panda kindergarten” to hug the little pandas. Before entering the enclosure, we had to put on a disposable suit and sanitize ourselves before we were led into the enclosure. It was indeed a magical moment when we came face to face with the cute pandas and hugged them! The baby pandas were simply adorable; one longed to be hugged, the other started chewing my daughter’s shoes and another ran to hide. The kids and I ran wild trying to hug the adorable pandas!  Very soon, it was time to leave the enclosure (for the welfare of the little pandas, we only allowed to spend five minutes with them). Though it was really a short encounter, we spent our most memorable moment there.

We went back to the nursery to observe another baby panda that started learning how to crawl. From the windows of the intensive care unit, he looked like a stuff toy panda until he started moving! The nursery at the Center is staffed 24 hours a day 7 days a week, to care for the newborn pandas, which require feeding every three to four hours. Extensive diaries are kept on each newborn.

Very soon, we were ready for our volunteer duty.  The panda ate a mixtures of carrots, apples and bamboo cakes (specially mixed with vitamins) which we fed through the fencing of the iron cage. While the pandas were enjoying their food, we dragged bamboos onto a cart and carried them into the empty enclosures to get dinner ready; a panda feeds on about 30kg of food per day, so one can imagine how much is being passed out as waste! Of course, the job entailed cleaning up that huge amount of the waste too! I was more then happy when my kids fought over to sweep the enclosure and clean the waste up. It was hard work but really something new for the kids!

It was truly a rewarding day and though we stepped out of the Center tired, we were awarded a panda certificate and were pleased to have spent time with the cuddly animals!

Trip organized by Country Holidays.
To learn more about tours and packages, please email beijing@countryholidays.com.cn or call (010) 8587-9263 and log onto: www.countryholidays.com.cn.         

This sponsored blog post has been brought to you by Country Holiday.

Photos courtesy of Country Holiday