Wenshu Monastery, Eastern Suburb Memory and Wangping Street

Chengdu's answer to Beijing's 798: the state-run Hongguang Electron Tube Factory — code 773, 'PO Box 106', one of the 156 Soviet-aided projects of the first Five-Year Plan, born 1958 on the eastern industrial belt — turned into a 218-mu culture park that opened on 29 September 2011 as 'East Zone Music Park' and took its present name in November 2012 (provincial gazetteer office, 2024). Free to walk in through the red-brick arch on the south side; the three surviving factory chimneys, a photo corridor of the old works, and a rolling programme of ticketed gigs, small-theatre plays and exhibitions in the workshop halls. Now a national industrial-heritage site and a 4A scenic area. Metro Line 6 or 8 to the gate.

The east bank of the Jin River below the 339 tower, remade in 2018-19 as 'Mengzhuiwan Citizens' Leisure Area' — a 1.68 km² sweep of riverside promenade, the Wangping Fang block (the old tax office turned free 'Mengzhuiwan Story Hall', a cave-style bookshop, a tea-and-opera club that charges for tea, not tickets). Xiangxiang Lane is a 100-metre, 2-metre-wide alley of small Sichuan restaurants open since 2000 and now cloned as Lanes 2 and 3 (Chengdu Release, 2019). This is where the city eats supper by the river: come at 19:00, walk the bank, pick a lane table, look up at the tower.

A working Buddhist monastery in the north of the old city — rebuilt in the Kangxi years on a Sui-era site, ranked first of the four great Chan monasteries of the Yangtze basin, and still run by monks, with morning chanting, free incense at the gate and an airport-style security check on big days. Free, no booking, 8:00-17:00 by the temple's own notices; the garden teahouse and the vegetarian dining hall are what make it a half-day rather than a quick look. Metro Line 1 stops at the door.

One of Chengdu's first workers' housing estates (1950s red-brick dormitory blocks for the state factories, north of the old city), mostly demolished and rebuilt as high-rises in the 2010s. What survives of the old street life is a market and, in a narrow lane off it, Mingting: the city's most famous 'fly restaurant' (cangying guanzi — cheap, loud, brilliant), on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list of the first Chengdu guide in 2022 (not on the 2026 or 2027 selections), serving brain-and-tofu and other homestyle Sichuan at ¥30-40 a head. We have not read a page describing the street as it stands in 2026: treat the neighbourhood as 'rebuilt, status unclear' and the restaurant as the reason to come.

Western China's first geology-led natural-science museum, opened for trial operation on 23 November 2022 beside the University of Technology's campus: six halls of Sichuan dinosaurs (the Hechuan Mamenchisaurus among them), minerals, earthquakes and life's origins inside a building shaped like a range of 'Shu mountains' joined by skybridges. Ticketed and real-name, closed Mondays, with a passport named as accepted for booking and at the door in the museum's 2023 rules (carried by the local listing; the December 2025 notice just says 'valid ID') — the rare Chengdu museum to have said so. Metro Line 8 to the gate.

The student snack street beside the University of Electronic Science and Technology — Jianshe Lane, made famous by a TV variety show, pedestrianised and rebuilt in early 2023 with benches and long tables. The 1.3 km of Jianshe Road around it was re-paved with 'industrial' lamp strips and old-photo boards for the east-side factory story (local media, Feb 2023). Egg pancakes (danhonggao), grilled brains, cold jelly, octopus on sweet-potato skin, ¥30-50 a head. The stalls turn over fast and the city's own reviewers grumble that it is now 'the same snacks as everywhere'; it is still where locals send you when you ask for street food.

The 339-metre broadcast tower on the Jin River's east bank ('Tianfu Panda Tower' since a rebrand, '339' to everyone), with an observation deck, an outdoor viewing ring and a revolving restaurant partway up. The observation levels have been shut since July 2025: the operating company, Chuanta Chengxing, went into bankruptcy liquidation and no reopening date has been given (a NetEase account on 16 Aug 2025 citing the provincial complaints platform, 23 Jul 2025; Ctrip lists it as suspended). The tower itself still lights up at night and the 339 mall and riverside below are open as usual, so the outing survives, the ticket does not. Chengdu is flat and hazy; on a rare clear day the deck used to show the plain and the Longmen hills, and may again if it reopens.

The rebuilt 'west-Sichuan courtyard' lanes wrapped around the monastery — phase one open since the 2000s, phase two (15 new courtyards and the Miaoyuan theatre, 1.8 ha between Renmin Middle Road and Caoshi Street) due in 2022 (a plan; present state unchecked) — sold as one of the city's 'eight streets, nine fang, ten sights'. Worth it for two things: the pastry shops (court-style cakes by the box) and Zhang Laoer's sweet-water noodles and cold jelly, both Chengdu breakfast classics. The rest is a pleasant, early-closing tourist street.