Chengdu 3-Day Tour: Panda Base & City Highlights

We start the day by hearing birds singing in Huanhuaxi Park, from where we stroll all the way along Funan River, pass Dufu's Thatched Cottage and to an antique market. In there, you may get dazzled by the fakes and genuine ones. A Chinese Tea Ceremony experience is arranged for a short break before continuing our walking tour. Our last stop before lunch is Qingyang Gong (Bronze Goat Taoist temple), which is an unexpectedly quiet and peaceful temple in spite of a location in the busy noisy center of Chengdu.

For lunch, we will continue to walk through a park and along Funan River to finally reach one of the most popular noodle restaurants among the locals.

In the afternoon, after visiting Kuanzhai Alleys, a perfect combination of modernism and tradition, we will arrive at People's Park to experience the locals' laid-back lifestyle. There is an open-air tea house of over 100 years' history. It is the place where we will spend about 40 minutes doing nothing but drinking tea, eating sunflower seeds, watching people get their ears picked or hearing outdoor karaoke by the seniors.

The third stop in the afternoon is Wenshuyuan Monastery, which is not only a religious place to learn about Buddhism, but also serves as a living quarter for the locals. Inside the traditional Chinese old-style buildings, we can find elegant tea houses, local snack restaurants, stylish cafés and even luxury hotels. Then there comes the real foodie moment. We can stop stand by stand for an amazing bite of Guo Kui (crusty pancakes with pork or beef filling), baked egg cake, or hot bean jelly etc..

In the evening we will watch the Sichuan Opera Show before finishing our day tour. 

It takes you about 2 hours to drive to Leshan Giant Buddha. On the way to Leshan Giant Buddha, you will take a stop on the half way, where you can find a tea plantation, it is a good chance to have a soft walk to relax your legs before continuing on.

On arrival you will choose to walk up the mountain to see the Giant Buddha, if there is a long queue, you can take a boat to visit it. Lunch will be arranged in the local restaurant.

After visiting Buddha, there will be 40 mins drive to a laid-back old town. Take a walk around the town where traditional lifestyles still survived from the modernization. Along the way we visit traditional workshops such as blacksmith's shop, bamboo workshop, barber shop etc. Enjoy tea and chat and share stories with lovely local people in old tea house and later drop in one of the hundred-year-old courtyard house where it's owner are so proud of and love to share stories of the house

A short drive takes us up to the mountain. The tea farmer will take us to the tea field, where we will learn a lot about tea from how to pick-up the best tea sprouts or tea buds, to weather conditions and different regions for Tea. Have a try of picking tea from the tea trees!

Afterward visiting the tea business family to reveal the process of making all kinds of tea, let's sit down in front of the farm house and enjoy tea – more stories sharing and learning of tea, as in of wine there are Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir in tea as well!  After that going back to your hotel in Chengdu will normally take about 2 hours.

Pls notice that this is a rough schedule for the half day tour, it may be adjusted due to the traffic.

Dujiangyan Giant Panda Base is located on the northwest, 70km away from Chengdu city, which needs about 1.5hr driving. It presents a wild natural environment for the pandas. There are about 40 Pandas in the base including many famous celebrities like Bao Bao who was born in Washington, DC. We will spend one day volunteering in Dujianyan Panda Base. During the volunteering, we will make the Panda's cakes, clean the enclosures, and feed them the cakes. Today we will spend half day doing the panda volunteer program.

After our lunch nearby Dujiangyan Panda Base, we will drive about twenty minutes to Mount Qingcheng, the birthplace of Taoism.

The mountain is great for a half day trip and also has a ton of temples covering its 36 different peaks. Trekking up and down the mountain takes around 3-4 hours to complete depending on your hiking speed. The hike takes you up the mountain and through many different Taoist temples. The hike is really pretty, and if you go the entire distance you will be led throughout many different remote parts of the forest. We will choose the cable car up and down which makes our hiking much more easier, and the cable up takes us half way up the mountain. 4,134 feet up to the top of the mountain, you'll find yourself at the Laojun Pavilion Temple.

After that we will walk down to the bottom along the same way and meet our driver there, go back to downtown Chengdu, the end of trip.