Morning - the fabric that named the city
Chengdu is called Jinguan Cheng, the city of the Brocade Officer, because the Han court appointed an official here to supervise the silk trade. The city's river, streets and pavilions still carry the word for brocade in their names. The material in question is Shu brocade - a silk figured fabric woven in the Chengdu area and ranked first among China's four great brocades, alongside Song, Yunjin and Zhuang. The weaving technique was inscribed in China's first national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2006, and in 2009 it was entered on UNESCO's Representative List as part of China's sericulture and silk craftsmanship.
The numbers explaining why it matters are mostly about time. A single hand-woven length passes through as many as a hundred separate steps - design, final drawing, pattern-setting, warp-and-loom preparation, then weaving itself with its own vocabulary of draft, heddle and shuttle work. A skilled hand produces about eight centimetres a day. That is the origin of the phrase by which the trade has always been described: an inch of brocade, an inch of gold. Your guide sets out the arc of the craft on the drive, from Han-dynasty state supervision to Tang-dynasty export along the southern silk route to a present-day industry kept alive partly by digital archiving and partly by the people who still sit at the loom.
Late morning - at the loom
The morning's practical session places students in front of a drawloom, with a practitioner explaining the pattern-drawing process by which a design is translated into the cords that will command the warp threads. Students who want to try the shuttle are given a supervised short run. Sessions are arranged with named studios and named practitioners in advance; they are not walk-in admissions, and the specific studio depends on availability and on the age and size of the group.
Lunch
A Sichuan lunch.
Afternoon - the stitch, then the stage
The first afternoon session moves to Shu embroidery, a separate craft sharing the same tradition: one of China's four great embroideries, with twelve categories of stitch and 122 named stitches within them. A practitioner takes the group through a small piece, and the teaching point is precision - how a single motif is built from changes of stitch rather than from changes of colour.
The day ends at the opera. Sichuan opera was inscribed in the first national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2006 and is one of China's oldest surviving forms. It took its present shape when five separate vocal systems - Kun, Gao, Huqin and Tan, plus the local lantern drama - began sharing the same stages from the Qianlong period, and it keeps five distinct role types and more than six thousand traditional and newly created pieces. Foreign audiences know it for face-changing, and the technique is genuinely remarkable, but it is one of a set that also includes fire-spitting and the long water sleeve. Your guide introduces the conventions before you watch, so that the performance reads as theatre rather than as a trick. An evening performance can be added on request; it is arranged separately and depends on the venue's schedule, which is why it is not built into the daytime price.
On access, plainly
This is a day of arranged sessions rather than gate admissions. Studio time, practitioner supervision and any performance are booked in advance with the people who do the work, and they are confirmed individually. Because none of it is a ticketed visitor attraction, the price page for this programme shows no admission line - which is an accurate reflection of how the day is built, not an omission.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
