Chengdu holds 3,000-year-old bronze heads from Jinsha, a poet's thatched cottage rebuilt for twelve centuries, and face-changing opera performed nightly in a Qing courtyard. Between them sit A4 gallery districts and factory-turned-studio quarters that made this China's most liveable art city.
The 2001 discovery that rewrote Shu history: gold Sun and Immortal Birds foil, jade cong and 3,000-year-old ivory in a glass-roofed excavation hall. Open 08:00–18:00 (last entry 17:00), closed Mondays. Book via WeChat mini-program with passport.
A ten-table noodle room where zhajiang and sweet-water noodles arrive in under three minutes. Order tianshui mian (sweet water noodles, thick and chilli-sweet) and fuqi feipian. Cash or WeChat Pay; no English menu, point at the wall photos.
Chengdu's most serious contemporary institution, in the Luxelakes district south of the city. Founded 2008, museum-scale since 2016, with an annual iSTART children's art festival and strong Chinese mid-career solo shows. Tuesday–Sunday 10:00–18:00.
A 1950s Soviet-planned electronics factory turned art quarter: red-brick workshops, retained gantry cranes and chimney stacks now holding galleries, live-music halls, indie cinemas and photo studios. Free to enter, most spaces open until 22:00.
The largest provincial museum in western China: Han dynasty tomb bricks showing salt mining and harvest scenes, Tibetan thangka collections, and a Zhang Daqian hall with his Dunhuang cave copies. Tuesday–Sunday 09:00–17:00, last entry 16:00.
Where Du Fu wrote roughly 240 poems during his 761–765 exile, rebuilt repeatedly since the Northern Song. Twenty hectares of bamboo groves, plum courts, the Gongbu Shrine and stone-carved poems. Open 08:00–18:30.
The home stage of the Sichuan Opera Theatre on Huaxingzheng Street. Afternoon rehearsals and matinees show gaoqiang singing and bianlian (face-changing) without the tourist-package framing. Ticket window opens around 14:00.
The nightly 20:00 variety programme inside a Qing-style courtyard theatre: face-changing, hand-shadow puppetry, fire-breathing, erhu solos and a comic sketch, with long-spout tea service between acts. Roughly 90 minutes.
Operating since 1923 under camphor trees by the lake: bamboo chairs, covered gaiwan cups, copper kettle refills, ear-cleaners with tuning forks working the aisles, and retired regulars playing mahjong from opening. Around 07:00–22:00.
A working Tang-founded Chan Buddhist monastery rebuilt in 1697, with 300 Buddha statues and its own teahouse and vegetarian canteen in the rear courtyards. Temple free, halls open 08:00–17:00, incense smoke thick all morning.
The artist-founded studio colony in Sansheng Township, started 2003 by Zhou Chunya and Guo Wei in a converted warehouse and now spread across a lakeside campus of working painters' studios and small commercial galleries.
A 4,000 sqm bookshop dug beneath the Daci Temple plaza, designed by Chu Chih-Kang as a subterranean 'cave library' with black steel gantries, hanging lanterns and an art-book and design section that runs to closing at 22:00.