“Seven times he charged the enemy before breaking through their lines! Finally
he returned the boy to the king. But the king threw the child on the
ground, cursing that his general’s life had been risked. The general was
deeply moved. This is what we think of as loyalty.”
Behind Mr Shen, the courtyard is filled with the hum of dozens of other
conversations, the crackling of newspaper pages and the gurgle of hot water
being poured into the Chinese tea cups on every table.
A game of cards at the Daci Temple teahouse
An easy rhythm settles over the teahouse. As the mint-green Thermos flasks on
each table are poured, puffs of steam rise up and catch the sun filtering
down through the long swathes of dark-green canvas hung above for shade.
“We come here every day,” chip in two other pensioners, holding up their bus
passes and using the lids of their tea cups to stir up the pale-green
leaves. “It is relaxing. We are neighbours and we have been drinking tea
together for 30 years.”
At the temple in front of the teahouse, Buddhists chant prayers and light
hundreds of tea lights. A stall offers a chance to contribute to the Chinese
equivalent of the fund for the church roof: £3 buys a tile for the
renovation and a chance to paint your name in scarlet on the under side.
The daily ritual of stopping in at a teahouse to meet friends and pick up
gossip began in Chengdu at least 1,000 years ago and little has changed:
there has always been a teahouse on every corner.
Talking shop at the Shunxing teahouse
The era of the Three Kingdoms (Shu was central, with Wei to the north and Wu
to the south) is Chengdu’s equivalent of Arthurian legend, an age of dashing
knights and epic battles, of cavalry charges and siege towers.
Today, on the eve of British Airways’ first direct flight to Chengdu, pandas
are the city’s main attraction. The breeding base is just a short taxi ride
away, and it is worth going at dawn when China’s “national treasures” are
most active.
There are panda stickers on the green taxis, panda hats and plush toys in
every tourist area, and even strange and avant-garde public sculptures,
interpretations of pandas in steel and bronze.
But while pandas are guaranteed to please families, it is worth stepping back
along the vivid arc of Chengdu’s history. Much, of course, has been
destroyed, both by the madnesses of Chairman Mao and then by the modern
madnesses of the city’s economic boom.
“The old palace of Shu used to stand in the centre of the city,” says Mr Shen.
But then the Cultural Revolution broke out. “I remember when they knocked it
down. It was August 1967, and I was on leave from the army, visiting home.
The gardens of the Wuhou shrine
“They smashed it and built a memorial hall for Chairman Mao. The moat around
the palace was turned into an air-raid shelter. Most of us felt ashamed of
the destruction. If we still had it, it would have been a real marvel,
a smaller version of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.”
A few years later, the old city walls were also torn down, another relic of
the past deemed useless by the Maoists. What the Red Guards left untouched
has been reconfigured more recently, transforming ancient lanes into wide
boulevards, lined with shining towers of glass and steel.
One of the only remaining old lanes in the city sits off Shuijing Road, behind
the towering Shangri-La hotel and close to an ancient distillery.
Outside, the residents play cards on small tables under the eaves of their
ancient, and crumbling, buildings. But above them, a red banner spells out
their future: “Be the first to sign away your lease, get your pick of the
new apartments.”
In the heart of the city, one remnant from the kingdom of Shu has become a
major attraction. The Wuhou shrine is 400,000sq ft of soft mossy mounds,
osmanthus blossom, rockeries full of bonsai trees and ceremonial halls that
celebrate the architect of Shu’s golden era, Zhuge Liang. Walking down a
long vermilion-walled corridor, shaded by tall bamboo on both sides, you
reach a pavilion holding a golden statue of Zhuge Liang, holding his
trademark fan of long feathers. The balustrade posts outside are topped with
symbols of prosperity: carved stone pumpkins, pomegranates and the strange
Chinese fruit called Buddha’s Hand.
If the inside of the Wuhou shrine has been carefully maintained, the streets
outside have been made into a tacky tourist trap. The buildings in Jinli
alley look charmingly ancient, but one houses a teahouse offering Russian
pole dancing displays while another sells fried chicken.
Chengdu residents like to snack
Still, the alley is worth braving for the stalls down one part which sell
Chengdu street snacks: cold rice jelly noodles topped with chilli and
peanuts, steamed savoury cakes and barbecued skewers.
The key to the strength of the Shu was its “abundance of wheat and rice” and
the Sichuan basin remains China’s breadbasket today. Chengdu’s obsession
with eating has been refined over the millennia to the point where the city
was named, in 2010, as Asia’s first “city of gastronomy”, beating Tokyo,
Hong Kong and Singapore.
In any part of the city there are carts selling dumplings on the street, or
small holes in the wall serving anything from dou hua, smooth “flowery” bean
curd drizzled in chilli and crushed spices, to roasted rabbit heads.
In the morning, locals gulp down boiled dumplings bobbing in bowls of red
chilli oil or bowls of noodles topped with minced pork.
“People from Chengdu love to eat dumplings, fried buns and noodles, no
particular reason why, they are just tasty,” said Xi Zhonglian, a
56-year-old noodle seller who runs a small eight-table restaurant. “We don’t
actually have a name for our place,” he added. “We just call it 'Authentic
Searing Noodles’.”
At the Long Chaoshou, or Dragon’s Dumpling restaurant on Chunxi Road, climb
the stairs to the second floor, where for around £10, the waitresses will
deliver a banquet of tiny dishes, each one filled with a Chengdu delicacy.
Or try the Old Shunxing teahouse with its grey slate floors and dark wood
tables, where again an array of the city’s finest dishes is on offer, as is
the chance to try a Sichuan-style ear cleaning, and a rather less compelling
floor show of dancing and Sichuan opera.
Better to sit, eat and chat, like the locals. Life in Chengdu is timeless, as
Mr Shen says. “They were very civilised and elegant back in the time of Shu,
and the people of Chengdu are the same today. We would rather talk than
fight.”
Additional reporting by Adam Wu
Malcolm Moore is the Telegraph’s Beijing correspondent
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