Southern Sichuan
Southwest of Chengdu, fast-flowing rivers converge at Leshan, where more than a thousand years ago sculptors created a giant Buddha overlooking the waters, one of the world’s most imposing religious monuments. An hour away, Emei Shan rises to more than 3000m, its forested slopes rich in scenery and temples. As Sichuan’s most famous sights, the Buddha and Emei Shan have become tourist black holes thanks to easy access – don’t go near either during holidays, when crowds are so awful that the army is sometimes called in to sort out the chaos – but at other times they are well worth the effort.
If you’re on your way down south to Yunnan, you might also want to break your journey at Xichang, a Yi minority town with a backroad route to Lugu Lake, right on the Yunnanese border. Emei and Dafo are best reached on buses, but it’s easier to get to Xichang via the Chengdu–Emei Shan–Kunming rail line.
Emei Shan
Some 160km southwest of Chengdu, Emei Shan’s thickly forested peaks and dozens of temples, all linked by exhausting flights of stone steps, have been pulling in pilgrims (and tourists) ever since the sixth-century visit of Bodhisattva Puxian and his six-tusked elephant, images of whom you’ll see everywhere. Religion aside, the pristine natural environment is a major draw, and changes markedly through the year – lush, green and wet in the summer; brilliant with reds and yellows in autumn; white, clear and very cold in winter.
You can see something of the mountain in a single day, but three would allow you to experience more of the forests, spend a night or two in a temple, and perhaps assault Emei’s sumit. It’s only worth climbing this high if the weather’s good, however: for a richer bag of views, temples, streams and vegetation, you won’t be disappointed with the lower paths.
Ascending Emei Shan
An ascent of Emei Shan can be tackled via two main routes from Baoguo: the 60km, three-day long route; and the 40km, two-day short route. Most people knock 15km or so off these by catching buses from Baoguo to alternative starting points near Qingyin Ge (Wuxianggang bus stop) or Wannian Temple; leaving early enough, you could make it to the top in one day from either of these via the short route, descending the next day – though your legs will be like jelly afterwards. If you’re really pushed for time, you could get up and down in a single day by catching a minibus between Baoguo Temple and Jieyin Hall (Leidongping bus stop), located a cable-car ride (¥120 return) from the summit, but this way you’ll miss out on what makes Emei Shan such a special place.
Bring a torch in case you unexpectedly find yourself on a path after dark. Footwear needs to have a firm grip; in winter, when stone steps become dangerously icy, straw sandals and even iron cleats (sold for a few yuan and tied onto your soles) are an absolute necessity. Don’t forget warm clothing for the top, which is around 15°C cooler than the plains and so liable to be below freezing between October and April; lower paths are very humid during the summer. You’ll also want some protection against the near certainty of rain. A walking stick is handy for easing the pressure on thigh muscles during descent – a range is sold along the way – or for fending off aggressive monkeys (the macaques here have been known to go for people, particularly when food is present). Store any heavy gear at the bottom of the mountain, or in Chengdu if you’re contemplating a round trip.
If you need a guide, an excellent choice is Patrick Yang (0137 08131210, emeiguides.com), who speaks good English and often takes tour groups up Emei Shan. He also arranges local “culture tours” for about ¥100 per person, touring a kung-fu school, noodle factory and kindergarten, with lunch in a farmer’s house.
Leshan
Set beside the wide convergence of the Qingyi, Min and Dadu rivers, 180km from Chengdu and 50km from Emei Shan, LESHAN is a dull, spread-out market town with a modern northern fringe and older riverside core, a transit point for visiting the Big Buddha, carved deep into a niche in the facing cliffs.
The Big Buddha
Impassive and gargantuan, the Big Buddha peers out from under half-lidded eyes, oblivious to the swarms of sightseers trying to photograph his bulk. In 713 AD the monk Haitong came up with the idea of carving the Buddha into the riverside’s red sandstone cliffs, using the rubble produced to fill in dangerous shoals below. The project took ninety years to complete and, once construction started, temples sprang up on the hills above the Buddha. At 71m tall, this is the world’s largest Buddhist sculpture – his ears are 7m long, his eyes 10m wide, and around six people at once can stand on his big toenail – though statistics can’t convey the initial sight of this squat icon, comfortably seated with his hands on his knees, looming over you.
Chengdu
Set on the western side of the Red Basin, CHENGDU is a determinedly modern city, full of construction sites, high-rise department stores and residential blocks. But it’s also a cheerful place: seasonal floral displays and ubiquitous ginkgo trees lend colour to its many excellent parks, and the population is also nicely laidback, enjoying its teahouse culture at every opportunity and unfazed by this being interpreted as laziness by other Chinese.
Chengdu was styled Brocade City in Han times, when the urban elite were buried in elegantly decorated tombs, and its silk travelled west along the caravan routes as far as imperial Rome. A refuge for the eighth-century Tang emperor Xuan Zong after his army mutinied over his infatuation with the beautiful concubine Yang Guifei, the city later became a printing centre, producing the world’s first paper money. Sacked by the Mongols in 1271, Chengdu recovered soon enough to impress Marco Polo with its busy artisans and handsome bridges, since when it has survived similar cycles of war and restoration to become a major industrial, educational and business centre. There are some downsides – the city’s traffic congestion and pollution can be atrocious – but on the whole it’s not hard to spend a couple of days here touring historical monuments, spiking your tastebuds on one of China’s most outstanding cuisines, and getting close-up views of locally bred pandas.
Around Chengdu
Chengdu’s surrounding attractions all make worthy day-trips from the capital, and most can be used as first stops on longer routes. Just to the northeast, the Sanxingdui Museum is stuffed with prehistoric bronzes, while unpretentious Qing architecture graces the picturesque market town of Huanglongxi southwest of Chengdu. Northwest, Dujiangyan sports a still-functional two-thousand-year-old irrigation scheme surrounded by wooded parkland, and nearby forested Qingcheng Shan is peppered with Taoist shrines.
Huanglongxi
HUANGLONGXI, 40km south of Chengdu, is a riverside village with a half-dozen Qing-dynasty streets, all narrow, flagstoned and sided in rickety wooden shops. Tourism aside – visitor numbers are frankly overwhelming at weekends or during holidays – it’s a pretty place to wander around for an hour and then have lunch or a cup of tea at one of the many riverside restaurants; it’s also popular with old ladies coming to pray for grandchildren to Guanyin, to whom all the village’s temples are dedicated.
From the old village gate, take the left-hand lane, which is almost narrow enough to touch either side as you walk down the middle. You soon reach the 500m-long main street; turn left for two tiny nunneries (one on the left, the other at the end of the street beside a beribboned banyan tree), both containing brightly painted statues of Guanyin, Puxian and Wenshu. At the opposite end of town, larger Gulong Temple (古龙寺, gŭlóng sì; ¥5) is in a wobbly state of repair: one of the halls features a dog-headed guillotine for executing criminals, while another contains an unusually three-dimensional, fifty-armed Guanyin statue.
Sichuan opera
Sichuan opera – chuanxi – is a rustic variant on Beijing’s, based on everyday events and local legends. Most pieces are performed in Sichuanese, a rhythmic dialect well suited to theatre, which allows for humour and clever wordplay to shine through. As well as the usual bright costumes, stylized action and glass-cracking vocals, chuanxi has two specialities: fire-breathing and rapid face-changing, where the performers – apparently simply by turning around or waving their arms across their faces – completely change their make-up.
Today, chuanxi has gone into a decline as a form of popular entertainment, though there are several places around town to catch tourist-oriented variety shows featuring short opera scenes, fire-breathing and face-changing, comedy skits, puppetry, shadow-lantern play and storytelling. These are pretty enjoyable and you might even catch occasional full-length operas. Venues include Shufeng Yayun (蜀风雅韵, shŭfēng yăyùn) in the Cultural Park (enter off Qintai Lu); the Ming-style open-air stage at the end of Jin Li, near Wuhou Ci; and the downtown Jinjiang Theatre (锦江川戏馆, jǐnjiāng chuānxìguăn) in a lane north of Shangdong Jie. Seats cost ¥120–220, depending on the venue and row.