Chunxi Road, Taikoo Li and Tianfu Square

The 15-metre panda hauling itself over the parapet of the IFS mall on Hongxing Road is the most photographed object in central Chengdu. It is 'I Am Here' by the artist Lawrence Argent, unveiled when Wharf's Chengdu International Finance Square opened on 14 January 2014; the mall's own press release put a sculpture garden and an art gallery on the seventh floor and a 'heritage plaza' on the ground floor. Two pictures to get: the rear end from the street below (Hongxing Road / Dacisi Road corner), and the face from the seventh-floor terrace — you have to go inside and up for that one.

The city's own history museum on the west side of Tianfu Square: free, five floors from the Bronze Age to the 20th century, and the country's largest collection of shadow puppets and marionettes. It is the single best first stop for understanding Chengdu — and the single most bookable big museum in town for a foreigner: 20,000 free slots a day, Friday and Saturday evenings until 20:30, and, unusually, an English booking interface that takes an email address instead of a Chinese phone number (museum notice, August 2025). Book 14 days out; the slots go.

Where Chengdu watches its own opera: the home theatre of the Chengdu Sichuan Opera Research Institute on Huaxing Street, two blocks from Chunxi Road, open again after an eight-month refit, with the Yuelai Teahouse beside it back to its Saturday 14:00 programme of classic excerpts — ¥40 / 60 / 80 including a lidded cup of tea. The tourist alternative in the same building is the 70-minute 'Legend of Face-Changing' show. This is the cheap, local end of the face-changing question; the tourist end is Shufeng Yayun in the Culture Park.

Chengdu's century-old shopping street and its Nanjing Road: a cross of pedestrianised streets east of Tianfu Square, department stores and phone shops, the sunken square with the giant screens, and — the reason to walk it rather than skip it — the old-brand snack houses on and off it: Long Chaoshou's wonton flagship on the street itself, Zhong Dumplings and Lai Tangyuan and Fuqi Feipian on the streets to the north. Metro Lines 2 and 3 meet under it. A generic mall street on a weekday, a river of people on Saturday night; Taikoo Li, IFS and Daci Temple are one block east.

A working Buddhist temple with 1,600 years of history — 'the first monastery of Cathay' in the old boast, where temple tradition says the young Xuanzang was ordained in the 620s — now entirely surrounded by the Taikoo Li shopping lanes, so that incense, chanting and luxury flagships share one block. Free, no booking, small, and with a teahouse in the courtyard that is the cheapest sit-down in the whole shopping district. The temple publishes nothing online itself; hours and the free entry are the platforms' figures.

Chengdu's origin point, dug out of a 1990s sports stadium: 49,000 m² of excavation since 2013 revealing 2,300 years of city layers — a Five Dynasties palace roadway, the Sui-to-Song Mohe Pool (once 710 mu, seventy football pitches), and the gardens and water channels of the Ming princes of Shu. The outdoor site zone, 27,000 m² on the north side of Tianfu Square, has been free and open 7:30-22:00 since 20 July 2023. The stadium-bowl 'inner zone' with the main remains was still under construction with an 'end of 2025' target, and whether it has opened is not confirmed by anything official we could find.

The big free science museum at the north end of Tianfu Square — the former provincial exhibition hall behind the Mao statue, three floors of hands-on physics, a Sichuan-themed floor (the Dujiangyan irrigation model is the useful one before a day trip), a dome cinema and a children's zone. It is the family fallback of the district, and the catch is the booking: free tickets are released online at 17:00 for three days ahead, 8,000 a day (the museum's notice of December 2025, as relayed by a listing), real-name, and the platforms say passports work — the museum's own site shows almost no text from abroad, though it does publish the hours and address.

An open-air, low-rise shopping quarter of grey-tiled pitched roofs and glass, laid out as lanes around the 1,300-year-old Daci Temple rather than as a box — the one mall in China that architecture people come to see. Flagships, the Fangsuo bookshop underground, and the temple's incense drifting over the terraces. Free to walk, open late, and the natural pivot of a Chunxi Road half-day: temple on one side, the IFS panda across the road, the Tangba Street cafés out the back.

The street that Time Out put on its 2018 list of the world's 50 coolest neighbourhoods — 539 metres of red brick, granite kerbs and cast-iron railings running east from Taikoo Li's back. It was once the lane where the Daci Temple monks stored their weapons (hence the name) and is now the city's densest run of independent cafés, small kitchens and studios, with the restored Chongdeli courtyard complex at its western end. Five minutes from the mall and a different city: sewing machines on the pavement next to skateboards. No gate, no hours, no ticket — come for a coffee and a walk.

The geometric centre of Chengdu and the interchange of Metro Lines 1 and 2. It is a big open square on the site of the Ming princes' palace and the Qing examination halls, with the Mao statue on its north side facing the sun-bird emblem inlaid in the paving, the Chengdu Museum on the west, the Sichuan Science Museum to the north and the Donghuamen ruins behind that. Everyone passes through; the useful things to know are that every metro entrance has an airport-style bag check, and that the square itself is a ten-minute stop between the museum and Chunxi Road.