Chengdu, China's fourth-largest city and capital of Sichuan province, is having a moment. UK searches for the destination jumped 133% year on year, according to Trip.com, fuelled by TikTok's love of Chinese megacities and the country's visa-free entry for British passport holders, reintroduced in February. The city pairs futuristic light shows with an famously unhurried pace of life — locals have a word for it, básì, meaning contentment.
Start the way locals do: in a tea house. Heming Tea House, a 1920s open-air pavilion in People's Park, serves bottomless refills served with theatrical flair — waiters twirl long-spouted copper kettles overhead as part of chan cha, a pouring ritual Unesco lists as Intangible Cultural Heritage. For a small surcharge (around 40 yuan / £4.50), you can watch live Sichuan opera, whose signature bian lian act sees performers swapping colourful silk masks in a blink. You may also be offered cai'er — a traditional ear-cleaning with tongs and goose feathers that originated in Sichuan.
Food is the other headline act. Look for 'fly restaurants' (cangying guanzi), Sichuanese slang for scruffy family-run eateries with excellent cooking — Yu Zi Bu serves tian shui mian, thick noodles in sesame-chilli sauce. Fair warning: even the 'mild' dishes will numb your tongue, thanks to the local erjingtiao pepper, which delivers mala — a floral, citrusy tingle rather than a blunt burn. Chef Jing Gao of Fly by Jing describes it as a gentle, lingering heat.
Then there are the pandas. The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding houses over 200 pandas, and hardcore fans queue from 6am for Hua Hua, a famously spherical six-year-old with her own merch empire. Skip the two-hour wait and wander the quieter enclosures instead. In town, pandas are everywhere — including a giant sculpture dangling off the roof of IFS Mall. For the cyberpunk shots, visit the Tower of Life's rainbow-lit bamboo pillars after dark, or Jiaozi Ring Bridge facing the Tianfu Twin Towers and their LED facades.
Practicalities: Air China flies direct from London Gatwick to Chengdu Tianfu three times weekly (about 12 hours), but the airport is an hour from the city. Upper House Chengdu (from £285) pairs a restored Qing-dynasty courtyard lobby with modern rooms; Ji Hotel, Atour and Hotel Joya offer rooms from around £43. Install Alipay for payments, Didi for taxis and AMap for navigation (Google Maps is blocked), and buy an eSIM like Airalo to bypass the Great Fire Wall. Chongqing, another viral megacity, is just 90 minutes away by high-speed rail.
