Chengdu

Chengdu occupies the heart of the Sichuan Basin, where the Jin River threads through a fertile plain long known as the “Land of Abundance.” Its elevation, between 450 and 720 metres, gives a mild climate tempered by the Qin Mountains to the north, which shield the city from harsh winter winds. Though summer humidity rises, daily highs seldom exceed 33 °C, and rainfall concentrates in July and August. Less than sixteen percent of possible sunshine reaches Chengdu in December, rising to just over thirty percent in August, yielding about 1,006 hours of bright sunlight each year. These conditions, together with the Dujiangyan irrigation system—constructed in the third century BC without a dam—have sustained the plain’s rice paddies, tea gardens and bamboo groves for two millennia.

The site that became Chengdu first hosted the Shu kingdom in the fourth century BC. Remnants of the Sanxingdui culture, discovered in 2001, reveal a sophisticated Bronze Age society whose golden Sun Bird motif now appears on China’s cultural heritage emblem. The settlement retained its name through successive dynasties, imperial fragmentation and republican transition. During the Three Kingdoms era, Liu Bei made Chengdu the seat of his Shu Han state; later it served as capital for regional regimes across the Middle Ages. Refugees from eastern provinces swelled its population during the Second World War, and for a brief period after 1945 it functioned as the republic’s provisional capital. Under the People’s Republic, rail connections to Chongqing (1952), Kunming and Lhasa linked Chengdu more firmly to eastern and southwestern networks, while a defence industry emerged in the 1960s.

Today’s urban population exceeds twenty million, making Chengdu China’s fourth most populous city and the only non–direct-administered municipality to surpass that threshold. It ranks thirty-fifth on the 2021 Global Financial Centres Index, and more than three hundred Fortune 500 enterprises maintain branches in the city. Automotive, machinery, pharmaceutical and information-technology firms share space with major research institutions such as Sichuan University, the University of Electronic Science and Technology, and Southwest Jiaotong University. On the plain’s western edge, Tianfu and Shuangliu airports form one of the world’s busiest paired hubs, while China’s high-speed rail network meets here on lines extending toward Xi’an, Kunming and beyond. The metropolitan expressways, twelve urban districts, five county-level cities and three counties cover almost 12,400 square kilometres, stretching some 192 kilometres east to west.

Conservation and biodiversity find a foothold in the forests of the Qionglai and Longmen ranges, where altitudes exceed five thousand metres and where giant pandas roam bamboo thickets. The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding partners with the nearby Sichuan Sanctuaries—home to more than eighty percent of the world’s wild pandas—to support breeding, rewilding and habitat protection across 9,245 square kilometres. Mount Qingcheng, rising to sixteen hundred metres, preserves Taoist temples whose dimly lit halls recall early practitioners. The Dujiangyan system remains fully operational, distributing water along channels that still guide seasonal flows without modern pumps.

Cultural life in Chengdu reflects both antiquity and adaptation. Wuhou Shrine honours Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei with stone inscriptions and statuary, while Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage recalls the Tang poet’s years in exile beside the Huanhua Stream. The Jinsha Relics Museum, a site of intense excavation since the twenty-first century, displays jade, gold and bronze artefacts spanning thousands of years. The Sanxingdui Museum’s new galleries, opened in 2022, present over two thousand relics in an expansive modern complex. Buddhist and Taoist centres—Daci Temple, Wenshu and Qingyang Palace—stand amid the urban grid, preserving texts and relics linked to Xuanzang and Lao Tzu.

Street life alternates between leisurely tea houses and tightly packed lanes of shops and eateries. Tea culture reaches back more than a thousand years; patrons sip jasmine or longjing tea while playing mahjong or listening to Sichuan opera. Bars outnumber those in Shanghai, and over thirty thousand tea houses serve as social hubs. Hot-pot restaurants, favouring local chilies and peppercorns, draw families and colleagues around steaming cauldrons. In the suburbs, “Nong Jia Le” home-style restaurants offer homemade dishes, lodging and mahjong tables under one roof, inviting city dwellers to spend a night at modest rates.

Nearby, several ancient towns preserve layers of history. Jinli Street, once a Han-era commercial thoroughfare, now hosts specialty shops beneath Qing-style roofs; Kuanzhaixiangzi’s Wide and Narrow alleys display vernacular architecture; Huanglongxi and Anren offer preserved mansions, museum collections and riverside promenades. Luodai, the largest Hakka settlement, retains its Three Kingdoms-era name in signage and ceramics.

Chengdu’s metropolitan status extends to global events. It served as host for the 2023 Summer World University Games and will stage the 2025 World Games. The city counts twenty-three diplomatic missions—behind only Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou—and houses the People’s Liberation Army’s Western Theater Command. As a national central city, Chengdu anchors western development strategies and supports scientific output that places it among the world’s top twenty-five research centres.

In every district, modern towers rise beside temples and tea houses. Traffic hums through tunnels and over bridges built for a city whose second ring road now encloses much of its floor space. Yet the Dujiangyan canals still flow, and the mountains remain visible on clear days. Chengdu has grown into a complex metropolis without shedding the elements that defined its past: abundant land, converging rivers, cultural crossroads and the pandas that have come to symbolize both local identity and conservation ambition. Its streets blend work and leisure, temple and teahouse, research lab and family kitchen. Over two thousand years old, Chengdu continues to shape itself around the plain’s living heritage and the aspirations of a city that still honors its name.