Chengdu

Chengdu grew on a plain that had already carried a distinct Bronze Age civilisation: the Jinsha site inside the modern city, found in 2001, and Sanxingdui to the north produced gold and bronze work unlike anything else in early China. After the Qin conquered the kingdom of Shu in 316 BC, the governor Li Bing built the Dujiangyan irrigation works around 256 BC, dividing the Min River to water the plain without a dam. The system is still in use, and it made Chengdu's agriculture reliable enough to support a large city for more than two thousand years — the plain's old name, Tianfu zhi guo, the land of abundance, comes from that.

The city was capital of the Shu Han kingdom in the third century, which fixed Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang in its memory and its temples. It prospered under the Tang, when Du Fu took refuge here, and again under the Song: Chengdu's brocade trade gave it the name Jincheng, its printers were among the most productive in the empire, and merchants in the city issued jiaozi, the first widely used paper money in the world.

Later centuries were harder. War and epidemic in the seventeenth century depopulated Sichuan so badly that the Qing resettled it with migrants from Hunan and Hubei, whose descendants make up much of the population. In 1911 Chengdu's branch of the Railway Protection Movement helped trigger the uprising that brought down the dynasty. The city was a rear base in the war with Japan, and since the 1990s it has grown enormously as western China's economic hub, adding electronics and software industries, a metro network and a second international airport.

Chengdu's self-image is built on leisure. The teahouse is the institution: a bamboo chair, a lidded cup refilled from a long-spouted kettle, hours of conversation, mahjong tiles clattering on folding tables, and ear cleaners moving between customers with their tuning forks and picks. People's Park and Wenshu Monastery keep the tradition in the open air, and the habit is defended as proof that Chengdu people know how to live — a contrast they often draw with faster, hotter Chongqing.

Sichuan opera is the older performing art, best known for bian lian, face-changing, in which masks are switched faster than the eye can follow, along with fire-breathing, puppetry and shadow plays. Chengdu also has an unusually active contemporary scene for an inland city, with independent music venues, bookshops, galleries in converted factories and a strong bar culture around Yulin. The city is recognised by UNESCO as a City of Gastronomy, and food is a normal topic of serious conversation.

Local identity is bound up with the giant panda, bred at the base on the northern edge of the city and used on everything from metro decoration to souvenirs. The Sichuanese dialect of Mandarin is spoken with evident pride and a good deal of humour. Visitors will find Chengdu people sociable and direct, willing to explain a dish at length, and unhurried in a way that can surprise anyone arriving from the coast.

The Chengdu municipality holds around 21 million people, making it one of the largest in China, though a substantial share live in satellite towns and farmland on the plain rather than the continuous city. The urban area has spread in rings from the old centre, with the newest growth running south through the high-tech zone towards Tianfu New Area.

The economy has shifted decisively from agriculture and defence industry to electronics, software, aviation and services: chip packaging and assembly plants, software parks, a games and animation sector, and the headquarters of many companies serving western China. Universities are large, rents are lower than in Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen, and the city has drawn young graduates who might once have gone to the coast.

Daily rhythms match the climate and the culture. Mornings start with noodles or soy milk, work runs long, and evenings are social — hotpot with colleagues, skewers on a pavement table, walks along the Jin River, square dancing in the parks. Weekends are for teahouses, temples on the plain and short escapes into the hills. Persistent concerns are traffic congestion, winter air quality in a basin where pollution settles under cloud, the cost of housing near the centre, and earthquake preparedness after 2008.

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan cooking, which pairs chillies with Sichuan peppercorn to produce mala, a numbing heat, and balances it with sweet, sour and fermented flavours. The essential ingredient is Pixian doubanjiang, a fermented broad-bean and chilli paste made in Pidu District, the former Pixian, on the city's north-western edge. Mapo tofu, soft tofu in a fiery meat sauce, is named after the pockmarked woman said to have cooked it here; huiguo rou, twice-cooked pork; gongbao jiding, chicken with peanuts and dried chillies; and fuqi feipian, sliced beef and offal in chilli oil, are all standards.

Street and snack food is a category of its own. Dan dan mian are thin noodles with a sesame and chilli dressing, and chaoshou are Sichuan wontons, eaten here in chilli oil or a chilli broth; noodle and dumpling shops dress both in sweet soy and garlic sauces as well. Skewers cooked in a communal spiced broth and charged by the stick are the informal cousin of hotpot, and rabbit — whole heads included — is eaten with more enthusiasm here than almost anywhere else in China.

Hotpot dominates the evenings, a cauldron of beef tallow, chillies and peppercorn into which diners dip tripe, beef, mushrooms and greens, cooled by a dip of sesame oil and garlic. Tea is the counterweight: jasmine and green tea drunk slowly through an afternoon, with Sichuan's own huadan and mountain teas in the shops. Sweet endings are light — bingfen jelly with brown sugar, glutinous rice balls, and cold noodles eaten in the heat of summer.