Chengdu - a little bit of everything (and farewell China)

Friday 31 October 2025

It was very wet first thing so we needed to find an indoor activity.  JC really wanted to visit the Sanxingdui Museum which hosts a plethora of bronze masks, but it was an hour+ each way on the metro and pretty niche in my eyes (history museums were one thing, but an ancient mask museum was a notch up I wasn't born for).  So we compromised and went to the Chengdu Museum. We spent most of our time on the ancient history floor which did have a bronze mask or two. 

I really was quite ancient history-ed out by this stage.  On the left is a bronze zhan from the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period (770-221 BCE).  I liked the stone rhino.

And there were plenty of pottery figurines.

After a couple of hours here we headed down to a food street next to Chengdu Wu Hou Shrine.  It was touristy (said we the tourists) but it was interesting to shuffle through.  I do like an old door.  I found some random veggie skewers to eat which I thought would be hot but they were raw.  Crunchy lunchy.

We enjoyed a stroll around Wu You Shrine/Temple.  The gardens were remarkably peaceful on the whole, as the tourists congregated around the main entrance and a bit of the red wall.

We left and walked up through a local park then realised we couldn't get out except by retracing our steps, so we had to loop back via the food alley.

We headed up to People's Park to a tea room JC remembered from his last visit, spotting live fish for sale on a bridge as we passed.  We could have also picked up a live terrapin from the vendor.

Heming Tea Room was a large, busy establishment. We settled in and people-watched, which was a lot of fun.  

We'd gone for a cheap cuppa, 30 RMB each (~£3) but if you wanted to splash out you could be served your drink by the tea master from a long spouted kettle, which was certainly a performance.    

You could also get your ear wax removed whilst you sat. We saw this happen in other tea houses and is definitely a thing to do over a cuppa.

People's Park was a pleasant stroll.

Next up was 'wide and narrow alley', which are 3 parallel pedestrian alleys crammed full of (mainly) tourist shops  It was heaving with tourists, unsurprising for a Friday evening, but glitzy sparkly ;-).  Chengdu is famous for its panda breeding centre so there are pandas everywhere.  JC discovered a Starbucks in all the hustle and bustle and popped in for 15 mins of peace.

Once we'd had our filled of tourist retail we hopped on the metro to find a confluence of rivers that looked worth visiting.  I did enjoy the metro card designs (I think I blogged similar excitement last year).

The Jinjiang River was nicely lit up and quite picturesque.  Parts of the waterfront were rammed with Chinese celebrating Halloween - there were some amazing costumes!

 

The walkways and vista was certainly fun to explore.

As it was our last night, we splashed out on a final hot pot.  I was fascinated by the DNA-esque look of the tofu. 

Saturday 01 November 2025

Home time.  For once, we didn't have an early start so pottered around the Wenshu Monastery for a bit before catching the train to the airport.  We checked in OK and, once on the plane, discovered we had been allocated two seats in a row of 3, with the middle seat empty.  How lovely. It became incredibly handy when, very early into the flight, I chucked yoghurt over myself, the seat and seatbelt: I had to move across to the empty seat as mine was too wet to sit on.  I took about 6 hours to dry too.

Our in-flight map got stuck over Russia - we were in our final descent, it stated "landing in 26 minutes" but the display suggested we were nowhere near!  Never trust a map...

Chengdu - Wenshu Monastery

Thursday 30 October 2025

We spent our last couple of days in Chengdu, as we were flying directly from there back to London on the Saturday.  We caught an early Didi to Lanzhou airport, capturing glimpses of the Yellow River as we went, and sailed through departures like royalty.  There were numerous staff who were keen to walk us through every stage.

Like Lanzhou, Chengdu is a large metropolis and it took us 1.5 hours via fast/slow metro lines to reach our hotel.  Unlike Lanzhou, and every other place we'd stayed this trip, the skies were grey and it was drizzly.  Blimey!  We had to dig out the gortex coats which hadn't seen an airing since the UK.  

We stayed in the same place JC slept ~10 years ago near the Wenshu Buddhist Monastery.  It was a beautiful old building and by far the oldest and authentic accommodation we’d stayed in during our whole trip [there was super little choice when booking hotels in western China from UK].

We visited the neighbouring Wenshu Buddhist Monastery, which is still inhabited by monks.  Worshipers were circling the pagoda as we passed.

This was the main prayer hall, on a Thursday afternoon.  NB - we popped in Saturday morning just before we left - the queues!

I do love a Chinese roof.

The monastery had a lovely tea garden.  The loose tea was put into the cup and you used the porcelain lid as a strainer when you drank.  There was a knack to it, but it was easy to pick up. 

Then I wanted to find a river so we walked to the local one.  Sadly it wasn’t terribly exciting so we did a large loop back to our hotel.  It was nice to get some km under our feet though and I found a cute caterpillar.  

I had definitely run out of steam by this stage - not for today, but for the holiday.  The impending re-entry to the UK was playing on my mind as I’d been watching things stack up in the inbox awaiting my action on return (and this was just my personal email).  We were meant to be going to see the largest old Buddha in the world tomorrow, but I cancelled our planned trip.  Although it sounded magnificent, it involved over 2 hours travel each way plus hours of queuing and fighting crowds - quite simply not the end I needed for the trip. 

We dined out locally in a smoky restaurant - smoking in food establishments is quite the norm here - then headed for some much needed rest.

Pingshan Grand Canyon and a train through the mountains

Wednesday 29 October 2025

We hired our Monday driver to run us up to Pingshanhu Grand Canyon today.  This geological park is on a par with grand canyons globally and is allegedly one of the world’s five canyons, eg the Giant Canyon of the Colorado and the Great Rift Valley of the East Africa.  Fortunately, for us it wasn’t overrun with tourists - in fact, none of the places we visited in Zhangye were, much to our surprise. 

On our arrival, we sat in the car negotiating via translation apps with our driver re: what time we had to leave.  An English speaking Singaporean lady stuck her head in to help, and before we knew it, her driver had bought the 3 of us tickets for the park.  He said he’d get us a ‘good price’.  The usual entry fee was 100 yuan plus 30 for shuttle bus.  Because I'm nosy, I'd gone with him to pay and watched him pay 210 for the 3 of us, confirmed by our entry ticket saying 70 yuan on it.  I was therefore a little surprised when the Singaporean lady told us her driver said we owed 130 yuan each.  Now, I always pay my way, but I do hate a fiddle.  Apparently hers and our drivers had sorted it out between them and we were to repay our driver.  So I messaged our driver to say we only owed him 70 for the ticket and 30 for the shuttle bus (eg 200 for both of us) as that's what I'd seen being paid.  He agreed.  I know it was only an extra 30 yuan each that the other driver was charging us, I but I objected to him making a quick buck out of us that way.

Anyway, back to the park (yes, that had irked me!).  We only had a few hours and it’s often hard to gauge how long you’ll need. We first walked along a path southwards to ingest the views.

We then headed down the 400 steps or so into the canyon.  Amazing scenery awaited us. 

As there weren’t many other tourists we managed to avoid getting them in our photos.  It was very cold but sunny - hence the natty fleece/sunhat combo.

I obey every sign...

It was wonderful walking in the base of the gorge.  

We were never really alone as there were fake stones/trees around with not-so-hidden security cameras.

This jeep was fun! 

It was a steady climb out of the canyon.  If we’d had longer I would have gone around it again, as there was an exciting, alternative route out, involving a squeeze up a crevice and vertical ladder.  However, we’d given it a miss when we passed it as it shortened the canyon valley walk too much and we wanted to spend our time down there.  Next time huh?

Back to the car and it was a one hour drive back to Zhangye to catch our train.  I caught up on lunch - car snacks Ruth style.

We arrived 2 hours early for our train and fortuitously found a coffee shop to perch in for an hour.  The cards came out and JC won crib :-(. He also found Harry Potter, mandarin style.

The train to Lanzhou took 3 hours and went through the Qilian mountain range.

We had some wonderful snowy views.

We have travelled over half the width of China in 5 trains over 2 weeks!

In Lanzhou we were suddenly in a metropolis.  Gone were the smaller stations we’d been used to, consisting of 4 or so platforms.  This one had 26 and was the size of an airport.  It took us a while to find our hotel. Pedestrian access from the station to the urban area was via a roundabout-shaped bridge over the highway, but it was only half finished.  So, instead of being a dazzling walkover, we ended up beside a main road for half of it.  

On entering our hotel we were pleased at how nice and fancy it was, only to be advised that we were in the wrong part and should have been in the budget end of it which was out to the side.  By budget it meant no room service, no turn downtown service and no breakfast, which hardly made it bad at all.  And we were only there for under 12 hours.

We got in the lift only to be joined by the seemingly autonomous hoover which was on its way to floor 11. 

Although it was gone 21:00 we needed some food so popped around the corner for beef and noodles (JC), rice and veg (me).  Total cost under £5.  We will find it hard to get used to not eating this cheaply! 

This is where we were now, albeit briefly.