Our home ground. Nobody hosts Chengdu better than the people who live it.
Chengdu is where our team lives, and this journey shows what that means: the panda keepers take our calls, the tea houses know our names, the chef who cooks our final banquet doesn't take reservations from anyone.
You enter the panda valley before the gates open and watch the morning feeding from the keepers' side of the fence. You meet the bronze-mask civilisation of Sanxingdui with an archaeologist who tells you what the textbooks don't. And you learn why a city of seventeen million treats the teahouse as its second living room.
Five days on our home ground — the gentlest, most delicious introduction to China we know how to make.
Evening arrival; Sichuan opera from a teahouse box, the face-change at arm's length.
In before the gates — the morning feeding hour from the keepers' side. Afternoon: the alley storyteller's Chengdu.
The new museum with an archaeologist at your side; the bronzes before the crowds thin them.
Dawn tai chi on Qingcheng mountain; evening, a master-chef Sichuan banquet built around you.
People's Park teahouse among the chess players; departure after.
The feeding hour from the keepers' side, before the public enters.
The bronze masks explained by someone digging beside them.
A banquet from a chef who cooks for no reservations — except ours.
Everyone sees the Wall. Almost no one has it to themselves.
Follow one leaf across a thousand years.
Two Chinas in one week: the skyline that out-dreams fiction, and the lake that taught China poetry.
First-picked Longjing at Meijiawu, West Lake in spring rain, a private boat up to the tea fields.
The 3,000-metre summer: Songtsam lodges, alpine meadows, a monastery library above the clouds.
The Wall in its best coat, golden ginkgo in the Forbidden City's courts, a duck feast after the day-trippers leave.
The Ice Festival before the gates open, Siberian tigers at feeding hour, a hotpot that thaws you whole.
A named tailor replies within 12 hours. Your first proposal within 24.