Chengdu, Served Extra Spicy

The most important thing to do in Chengdu was eat hot pot, and this particular hot pot quickly taught me a lesson. Its spicy broth seemed to exist in an entirely different dimension from anything I had tried before. The proper method was to swish food from the pot through the bowl of sesame oil shown below. Much of the chili oil would slide off, leaving the food considerably less spicy.

I knew none of this. The sesame oil simply struck me as strange. Wouldn’t dipping meat in oil make it unbearably greasy? So I ate it straight from the pot. I remember the fourth slice of meat very clearly: that was when I hit my limit. I could not swallow it and had to spit it out. It was far too spicy.

Then I tried the sesame oil. Consider me converted.

I do not know exactly what was in it, but the meat did not taste greasy at all after the dip, and the heat dropped to a level I could actually handle. It felt like magic.

Next we went to Kuanzhai Alley. And once there, one naturally has to mention a famous old verse that has absolutely nothing to do with it: a letter sent a thousand miles over a wall, the wisdom of yielding three feet, the Great Wall still standing while Qin Shi Huang is long gone.

Never mind the actual allusion. The guide was certainly going to find a connection somehow.

The lanes were lined with snacks. At a restaurant I also tried ice plant for the first time. The beadlike structures that look like water droplets are actually specialized bladder cells on the plant’s surface. They store water and salt, clinging to the stems and leaves like tiny translucent pouches.

That was new to me. It probably was not a Sichuan specialty, but I had certainly never seen it before.

Beyond food, a few things seemed to be everywhere in Chengdu. First came street mahjong—so many people were playing mahjong. The city felt leisurely and unhurried to me, and we often passed large groups playing out on the street. It is difficult to describe the scale of it; if you have never seen the scene for yourself, it is hard to imagine.

Then there were pandas. Shops selling panda merchandise, especially stuffed animals, seemed endless.

On the second day, we went to Dujiangyan.

Dujiangyan was first built during the Warring States period under the direction of Li Bing. Its great achievement was not simply damming the Min River. Instead, an integrated system—including the Fish Mouth, Flying Sand Weir, and Bottle-Neck Channel—diverted the river, carried away sediment, and guided water into the Chengdu Plain. More than two thousand years later, the system still functions, and it played an important role in turning the plain into the fertile region known as the “Land of Abundance.”

Our guide delivered a wonderfully animated explanation of water diversion, sediment removal, and flood control. I followed the words, but the engineering itself remained well beyond me. After staring at it for quite a while, my main conclusion was simple: the ancient engineers were brilliant; I understood almost none of it.

After that, we wandered around and took the obligatory photographs.

On the third day, we visited Du Fu Thatched Cottage, the site of the poet’s former home in Chengdu. Du Fu arrived here after being displaced by the An Lushan Rebellion and lived in Chengdu for several years. During that period, he wrote many of the poems that would later appear in Chinese school textbooks.

Then we found proof that even an oil lamp can be remarkably economical…

The grounds themselves were wonderfully peaceful, with bamboo, winding paths, old trees, and traditional buildings scattered throughout. Most of what stands today was reconstructed or expanded in later periods, but as a place honoring Du Fu, the atmosphere felt exactly right. A winding path into a secluded garden, with trees and flowers gathered around a quiet retreat—that old line of poetry suited the place rather well.

We then visited Wuhou Shrine. The shrine primarily commemorates Zhuge Liang, while also honoring Liu Bei and other figures from the state of Shu Han.

Lines I had known from school textbooks were suddenly there in front of me. One famous couplet praises Zhuge Liang for devising the strategy of the realm after three earnest visits and for serving two reigns with a veteran minister’s devotion. I had only memorized it from a textbook before; now I was reading it at the shrine of the person it described.

That brought our independent wandering around Chengdu to an end. Next, we were preparing to fly to Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic Area.