3-Day Chengdu Teahouse & Food Culture: Tea Ritual, Market & Wok

Morning - People's Park and a teahouse
Chengdu is a city that sits down. Begin in People's Park, laid out in 1911, where the paths are full of mahjong tables, ear cleaners working with long steel picks, and the Heming Teahouse, serving covered-cup tea in bamboo chairs since 1923. You take a seat, order a cup, and watch the city do nothing in particular for an hour - which is the point.

Late morning - Kuanzhai Xiangzi
Walk to Kuanzhai Xiangzi, the Wide and Narrow Alleys: three parallel Qing-dynasty lanes restored in 2008 and now lined with courtyard houses, teahouses and small workshops. Your guide reads the architecture - the gateways, the screen walls, the depth of the courtyards - and explains how a Qing official's residence differs from a merchant's.

Lunch
A courtyard restaurant serving Sichuan home cooking.

Afternoon - Shaded streets and a riverside pause
Continue on foot through the older residential streets west of the centre, past small temples and wet markets, and finish with tea or a cold drink beside the Jinjiang river.

Meals
Lunch

Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.

Morning - Market shopping
Cooking starts with shopping. At a neighbourhood market you choose the vegetables, tofu, pork and dried spices for the class, and your teacher explains what to look for: which peppercorns still smell of citrus when crushed, how to tell fresh tofu from a tub that has been sitting, and why a Sichuan kitchen keeps at least three kinds of chilli.

Late morning - The class
In a teaching kitchen you cook three dishes that carry the whole cuisine. Mapo tofu teaches the combination of fermented bean paste, chilli oil and ground peppercorn that gives Sichuan food its numbing heat. Kung pao chicken is the sweet-sour-salt balance in a single wok. Dan dan noodles is about the topping and the sauce rather than the noodle. Each dish is cooked by you, at a wok, with the teacher correcting as you go.

Lunch
You eat what you have cooked, with rice and a light soup.

Afternoon - Tea and the written recipes
The afternoon is quiet: a tea session covering the main Chinese tea families, and a printed recipe card for each dish with the ingredient weights, in English, so the dishes work in your own kitchen.

Evening - Free, with suggestions
Your guide returns you to the hotel with a list of nearby places to eat, from street stalls to a full Sichuan banquet.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.

Morning - The spice market
Start where Sichuan cooking starts: a wholesale market stacked with dried chillies, Sichuan peppercorn, star anise, cassia and fermented bean paste. Your guide explains the difference between the red peppercorn that numbs and the green variety that carries a citrus edge, and why Pixian bean paste, made west of the city and fermented for years, is the backbone of so many Sichuan dishes.

Lunch - Noodles and cold dishes
Dan dan noodles, wontons in chilli oil and a plate of cold dressed chicken, eaten the way Chengdu office workers eat them - fast, at a small table, with tea.

Afternoon - Hotpot, explained then eaten
Hotpot arrived in Chengdu from the docks of the neighbouring Yangtze port, where workers cooked cheap cuts in a shared spiced broth. The Chengdu version uses beef tallow rather than water, which is why the broth holds its heat and its flavour. You sit down to a divided pot, learn to judge the moment a slice of beef is done, and work through the standard order: tripe, beef, potato slices, tofu skin and greens. Milder and vegetarian broths are available at the same table.

Late afternoon - Teahouse at People's Park
Finish at Heming Teahouse, open in People's Park since 1923, where the tea comes in a lidded cup, the chairs are bamboo, and nobody hurries. Your guide orders jasmine and explains the local habit of a single pot lasting all afternoon.

Meals
Lunch, Dinner

Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.