Luodai sits in the Longquanyi district about twenty kilometres east of Chengdu, at the foot of the Longquan hills. Its population is largely Hakka, descendants of families who migrated from Guangdong and Jiangxi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries after the wars that depopulated Sichuan. Many residents still speak Hakka, and the town is often described as the best-preserved Hakka settlement in western China.
The guild halls
The core of the old town is a single long main street of low wooden shopfronts, with stone-paved lanes running off it. Three guild halls survive: the Guangdong Hall, the Huguang Hall and the Jiangxi Hall, each built by merchants from a different province. They are substantial timber buildings with courtyards, carved screens and ancestral shrines, and they document how migration and trade organised itself in this region. The Guangdong Hall is the largest and the most complete.
Hakka food
This is where Luodai becomes interesting for a visitor. Hakka cooking is represented by stuffed tofu, braised pork with preserved vegetables, salted chicken, and a bowl of cold jelly noodles dressed with chili, vinegar and peanuts that is deliberately, punishingly hot. The town is also known for its preserved foods, rice wine and a traditional cake made with glutinous rice. The offerings are cheap and sold from street counters, which makes it easy to eat across four or five stalls.
Practical information
The town is open all day with no admission fee for the streets; the guild halls charge separately or are free depending on the season. It is reached by bus or taxi from Chengdu in forty minutes, or by metro to Longquanyi followed by a short taxi ride. Weekdays are quiet, weekends are very busy, and spring is the best season because the surrounding hills are covered in peach blossom.
How to treat it
Luodai is a lived-in town with a tourist street attached, not a theme park. Walk to the ends of the main street and into the side lanes, where the buildings are unrestored and the older residents sit outside their doors. That is where the place makes sense.
