Christopher

Probably the most aggressive shopowners I’ve ever met but man, the Malaysian and Thai food is almost worth immigrating for.

We ran into this restaurant in Baoguo village, the part of town right at the foot of the mountain, by the waterfall. If you’re walking back to the bus station from the big waterfall and Baoguo (Declare Nation) Temple, take your first right on the main road and you’ll run into this lovely little hotel and its generously portioned, if bite-sized, restaurant. The staff are gracious, friendly, and patient, and when we couldn’t finish all of the scrumptious dinner, they offered to pack it all up and put it in the fridge for us to come back the next day.

Make sure to say hello to the little white dog.

就是一个在河边的饭馆. 他们老板全部是骗子. 又贵又没有那么好吃. 最好去别的地方吃饭吧.

As a traveller, I found this a tough town to really like. It’s humid, almost unbelieavably so for someone with just the right genetic mix to 出一身汗, as they say, or get covered in sweat from head to toe. But that’s alright, because there’s really only one huge thing drawing you to Leshan – the Big Buddha (大佛). (Or, I guess it’s possible you could be there for the shaokao. If this is true, you’re more hardcore than me)

Except that when we visited, it really seemed like the whole town was trying its best to scam us. From the cab drivers and rickshaw drivers at the bus station to the Lonely Planet-recommended hotels to the restaurants, I was really disappointed. Don’t be fooled on your first day by anyone telling you they have the best Xi Ba Dou Fu (西坝豆腐/Western Dam Tofu) in town. It is a local specialty, but every restaurant has it, so try around.

Taking the bus from town to the park that hosts the Big Buddha is convenient and cheap. There’s a 50 kuai tourist boat to get up close and personal, or you can take a 1 kuai boat 50 metres down the road and get off with all the locals on a tiny sandbank of an island in the middle of the river facing it to get a great view too.

Come on, it’s a huge Buddha. You’ve gotta go.

The locals I’ve met say most of the good stuff to see in Dayi is actually outside of town (like the amazing Daoist temple maybe 20 minutes’ drive away), but the food in this town is an attraction all in itself. The tang yuan (汤圆) is classic, just the right amount of gooey and warm for breakfast. The hundun (混沌) is also worth investing an appetite in – the extra-hot lajiao (辣椒) will leave you with just enough tastebuds to add some extra broth and have a good drink of it afterward. I found the spicy rabbit head 麻辣兔头) tasty but too much head to deal with in one sitting; your best meal, by far, in Dayi will be shaokao (烧烤) after 8 or 9 o’clock at night. A sort of relaxed street-side barbecue meal, locals can tell you which places are the your best bets for delicious late-night eats. Don’t worry about how clean it is – almost all the clientele are locals, so the shopkeepers rely on reputation.

Wen Shu Temple was one of the first places I visited in Chengdu and by far one of my favourite places here. At the end of Spring Festival, the area becomes host to a fantastic temple fair, and any other time of the year it is a great place to spend an afternoon for the food, the tea, the company and the solitude.

The temple is, obviously, dedicated to Wenshu, a Buddhist figure I don’t know much about myself (any help?) and is host to a calligraphy institute, a reasonably large Buddhist library (from the outside at least) and the one of the best vegetarian restaurants around. The veggie hui guo rou (回锅肉) is not to be missed.

You can take bus number 55 pretty close to the temple itself. It’s about a ten minute walk from the nearest stop, but the walk past the nunnery, the teahouses, and the myriad shops hustled in amongst the recently rebuilt “historical” district make for a good walk. Entrance to the temple is 5 kuai, but if you’re clever you may find a way in another entrance for free.

Head to Guanghan to visit the amazing museum at Sanxingdui (三星堆), where they discovered the first evidence in millenia that the Bashu empire really did exist. You need to see it up close to understand, and you will not the disappointed by the thorough, well-explained museum or the excellent local transportation there (buses head there from downtown Guanghan every hour, and the conductor on hour bus was endlessly helpful, even with my terrible Mandarin).

Luzhou is a pretty great little town rolling over the hills around and between the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) and the Tou River – they meet up on the north side of town, and local culture seems to circulate in and around this mother river and its smaller companion, giving it one of its nicknames, River City.

Its other nickname, Wine City, comes from its claim to fame of producing 2 of China’s 5 great liquors. There’s one street, in fact, where a lot of it is produced that reeks of the sweet scent of fermentation (yum). Try the local dou hua, a really soft warm bean curd you dip in a spicy, really tasy little sauce they whip up with la jiao. I recommend getting the hun dou hua though, the mixed kind, because the pure veggie kind is pretty flavourless if you’re not used to it. On the ‘wrong side of the Yangtze river,’ across the banks from the main part of town, you can visit a little park hugging the cliffs with a few ancient Buddhas and a few more they’re still working on building. Then take a walk through the gui fruit tree orchard and spend an afternoon at a nong jia le, the farmer’s houses that get opened up to visitors for a restful day of eating, drinking tea and cracking melon seeds.

You will definitely be a curiosity if you look like you’re not Han Chinese, but it’s definitely worth a visit. The local dialect is great, the climate is even sweatier than Chengdu, and even though every other city in China claims to have been voted ‘Best Tourist City in the Country’ five times running, you won’t regret the four-hour bus ride from Chengdu or two-hour trip from Chongqing.

Also within striking distance of the Shu Nan bamboo sea in neighbouring Yibin, which we did not get to visit but whose beauty is the subject of much wandering and a lot of filming, including several scenes that made their way into Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

This place is great. It’s a reasonably sized town, with friendly locals and a really long central square that’s apparently one of the biggest in China. Its main claim to fame is being Deng Xiaoping’s hometown, so they’ve made a park around his childhood home (60 yuan to get in), named the main library after him, and built a giant baoding in his honour – the traditional Sichuan style of pot, but about 20 feet tall.

My friends and I found it pretty fun (or as the locals say, hao sua), but I will warn you that you may find it uncomfortable travelling here if you are not Chinese. Very few foreigners pass through, so you will be the centre of attention pretty much everywhere you go; I am not exaggerating when I say literally dozens of people were taking pictures of my friends from Denmark and Barbados. Just so you know. Have fun!

I was genuinely shocked at how delicious their food was. On the basis of one greasy take-out noodle box, I can heartily recommend anything on their menu. Amazing.