Evening: Where to Go?

The show every tour bus goes to, and the easiest way to see face-changing, fire-spitting, the rolling lamp and the puppets in one 90-minute sitting with a tea at your elbow. Do not go on a holiday week without a ticket — the 20:00 show sells out and the extra sittings fill with coaches; on a weekday you can usually buy at the desk an hour before. The traps: the company's own Chinese booking site takes only WeChat / Alipay, so a foreign card books on Trip.com and collects by name at the park gate; and every price here is a platform's, the show prints none. The trade-off: it is a produced tourist variety show, not an evening of Sichuan opera — for that, the Saturday 14:00 excerpts at the Yuelai Teahouse are the other end of the same question, and they are not an evening. For the one-evening visitor who wants the spectacle and a seat; families; anyone booking with a foreign card on Trip.com.

Short, pretty and fully bookable in English: the one Chengdu night experience that needs no Chinese phone, which is why it is where a first evening starts. It is also 30-40 minutes for ¥118, in a crowd, with a Chinese-only soundtrack, on an open deck. Do not take a Friday-Sunday or holiday boat after 19:30 unless you like queues; do not book the tea or hotpot boat expecting to sail from Dongmen (those leave from the south-section wharf 8 km away); and do not expect a refund on a rainy night that still sails — bring a jacket. The trade-off with the bank is free: Anshun Bridge and Hejiang Pavilion at dusk are better lit from the shore, and the boat is worth it only for the Lan Kwai Fong terraces and the projections you cannot see from land. For the first-timer with a foreign card and no Chinese phone; non-drinkers and families who want the river lit up; anyone with 40 minutes before dinner.

Nightlife, not heritage: a generic bar strip with a good river view, tourist prices and, on holiday nights, touts. Go for a terrace beer and the lights — our entry's own evening is the boat at 19:00 and a Lan Kwai Fong terrace at 20:00, since the boats pass right under it. Do not go on a Friday, Saturday or holiday eve expecting quiet, never follow an invitation into a bar, and check the bill before the bottle is opened. The trade-off with the show and the boat is simple: this is the only one of the four with alcohol at its centre and nothing to see but the river, and the bridge you stand on is a 1988 road bridge — the nine-arch stone replica is 1.9 km downstream and worth the walk in daylight, not at night. For a drink with the river lit up, on a weeknight; the terrace after the boat.

The free evening: an open-air quarter of grey-tiled pitched roofs and glass laid out as lanes around the 1,300-year-old Daci Temple, whose walls and gate you keep meeting between the shopfronts. It is the one mall in China that architecture people come to see. Do not come for quiet (every evening is the crush on the main lanes) and do not eat inside (chain and hotel prices; Huaxing Street and Tangba Street are the local answer). It is still a luxury mall (the brands are the same as everywhere), so come for the plan, the temple walls and the Fangsuo bookshop underground, and spend your money on the next street. The trade-off with the other three is that there is nothing to buy a ticket for and nothing that starts at a fixed hour; whether the temple itself opens in the evening our entry does not say. For the evening after dinner for anyone who does not drink; families with a pushchair; the Chunxi Road half-day that runs into the night.