Chengdu

Pandas eat in the morning and sleep through the middle of the day. The first couple of hours after opening are the only window in which they move, and on hot afternoons they retreat indoors. The grounds are wide enough that the shuttle earns its fare.

The shrine honours Zhuge Liang, yet Liu Bei's tomb lies inside the same wall, and a board claims this as the only place where ruler and minister share one shrine. The bamboo-lined passage between red walls is the corner that ends up in photographs.

It runs on from the Wuhou Shrine wall with no ticket of its own, so you cross into it without noticing. Once the red lanterns are lit the narrow street moves one way only, which is an argument for walking it once in daylight.

Three lanes survive where Manchu soldiers and their families lived under the Qing. Wide Lane, Narrow Lane and Well Lane run parallel and differ in width exactly as their names say. Many inner courtyards are teahouses now, so one wall in it goes quiet.

Du Fu came down to Chengdu in the winter of 759 and stayed four years. The thatched hut standing now was put up by later hands. The grounds are large, an hour's walk through bamboo and water. More than two hundred of his poems are said to date from here.

The site came to light in 2001 when a housing excavation turned up ivory and gold leaf. The disc cut with a sun and birds is a palm across and no thicker than paper, so its room alone is kept dark.

It is 130 kilometres south of Chengdu, an hour or so by fast train. The cliff stair down to the feet of the 71-metre seated Buddha is one person wide. In season an hour goes on that queue. A boat puts you in front of it with no queue, but no closer.

Li Bing laid this out in the third century BC and it still divides the water. Nothing dams the river: a wedge splits the current in two midstream, so the flow never stops. The Anlan rope bridge above sways with each step and slows everyone crossing it.

The front mountain and the back mountain are not the same outing. Taoist halls are scattered along the ridge. The front takes half a day with a cable car and a boat, the back a full day up a valley. They ask for different shoes.

Find an empty bamboo chair and sit down in it. Someone will come round with leaves to choose from, and once you have paid the hot water keeps coming all day. Ear cleaners work the aisles, ringing their metal tuning forks as they go.

A Chan temple founded under the Tang, its halls rebuilt in the Qing. The vegetarian canteen inside shapes soy and wheat into mock meat, and in the courtyard teahouse old men pass half a day over lidded cups. The lanes out front are dressed as an old quarter.

In Guanghan, 40 kilometres north of Chengdu. In 1986 two sacrificial pits yielded bronze masks with jutting eyes, a bronze figure far taller than a man, and bronze trees. They resemble nothing from the central plains; newcomers usually stand and stare.

A Buddhist mountain sacred to Samantabhadra. The Golden Summit stands at 3,079 metres under his gilded statue. Monkeys on the middle slopes snatch any bag held in a hand, so keep food zipped away. Many pair it with the Leshan Giant Buddha over two days.

At the end of Chunxi Road, Chengdu's busiest shopping street, stands IFS, a giant panda sculpture climbing its outer wall. Its rump is visible only from the roof garden upstairs. Taikoo Li next door was built as a shopping quarter round the old Daci Temple.

In Sichuan opera the actor flicks his head and a new face appears, mask after mask. The method is said never to leave the family. Evening shows fit face-changing, fire-breathing and hand shadows into an hour or so, and the front rows are tables for tea.

An old river-landing village 40 kilometres south of Chengdu, where two streams meet. Qing-era streets and ancient banyans survive, and period dramas often film here. Weekends are packed; on a weekday morning the lanes are far quieter.

An old town in Dayi County west of Chengdu, lined with landlords' mansions and Western-style residences from the Republican years. The Jianchuan Museum Cluster, built from one man's collection, is here too, with dozens of buildings; a whole day falls short.