Culinary tour of Sichuan, China

With a reputation for serving spicy food, Sichuan province is also a red hot destination being discovered by adventurous travellers. Think you’ve seen it all? David May gives us a preview.

The forests of Mt Emei in the Sichuan province, China.

Looking for a new variation on an old theme? Off the beaten track down in China’s south-west, Sichuan is the size of Western Europe and still relatively undiscovered by foreigners.

Bordered by the Tibetan Plateau in the west and by the Three Gorges and the Yangtze River in the east, this is a starkly beautiful place with snow-capped mountains, vast swathes of fertile grassy plains, picturesque valleys and more than 11 million hectares of forests.

The scenery alone is worth the effort. In the north, Jiuzhaigou is a deep valley of stunning natural beauty, a UNESCO World Heritage site with waterfalls, snowy mountains, lush green forests, nine traditional Tibetan villages and more than 100 lakes spread across 620sq.km.

Just east of Leshan City is the Leshan Giant Buddha, carved into the cliffs of Mt Lingyun in 713AD. With a sitting height of 71 metres, it is believed to be the world’s largest statue of the Buddha carved in rock.

On every tour itinerary is the beautifully forested Mt Emei. One of the four most sacred Buddhist mountains in China its attractions include steep cliffs, wildflowers, roaring waterfalls and many monasteries and temples, most built between 25 and 220AD.

Chengdu is one of China’s most relaxed cities, envied for its hedonistic lifestyle, vibrant street life and atmospheric old teahouses, where locals spend hours maintaining the traditional art of idle conversation and indulging their obsession with mahjong.

There are classy shopping centres, such as the huge pedestrianised Chun Xi Plaza in central downtown, full of boutiques, jewellery shops, department stores, electronics outlets, restaurants and food vendors.

Providing a glimpse of a distant past, Jingli Street, one of the city’s busiest commercial boulevards in the third century AD, was reconstructed in the style of the period in 2004 with ‘ancient’ wooden teashops, hostels, taverns, bars and puppet shows.

For something completely different, the Shu Feng Ya Yun Teahouse is the unlikely venue for nightly performances of the extraordinary Sichuan Opera which has been a hit around Chengdu since the 14th century.

Playing to a packed house of mostly locals there are no dulcet sopranos and towering tenors here, this is all banging drums, squeaky music, fire-breathing demons, incomprehensible storylines and a peculiar skill unique to Sichuan known as face-changing in which performers switch elaborate face masks in a fraction of a second.

But Sichuan’s most popular attraction by far lies on Chengdu’s outskirts, China's giant pandas (see overleaf).

When chillis arrived from South America in China centuries ago, none became more enthralled with the little fireballs than the Sichuanese. They mixed them with the local, tongue-numbing Sichuan peppercorns and a new cuisine was born.

While there’s plenty of milder food available in every restaurant, most establishments serve the more popular Sichuanese dishes: twice-cooked pork (first boiled, then fried in a wok with plenty of fermented bean and chillis), gong bao chicken (a medley of chicken pieces, peanuts and red chillis) and Ma Po’s tofu, another blistering concoction based on bean curd, chillis and pork or beef mince.

But it’s the huo guo, or spicy hotpot, that really sets tongues wagging – little cauldrons of bubbling oil with thick layers of chilli and Sichuan pepper floating on top into which bits of meats and vegetables are plunged. Every restaurant worth its salt in Sichuan will have these dishes on the menu but, curiously, almost every dish has its own unique flavour.

Hotpot restaurants are the most popular in Chengdu but, for variety, check out the food vendors on the backstreets of the Wengshufang quarter where you can find anything from the local version of grilled kebabs to sauteed sparrows.

They are fat, fluffy, adorable and great survivors. China’s giant pandas have been lumbering around the country for more than 600,000 years but human interference has finally forced these cuddly living fossils to the edge of extinction.

A 2004 census found only 1600 giant pandas living in the wild, 85 per cent of the world’s total in scattered habitats around the mountainous bamboo forests of south-west China, mostly in Sichuan.

In 1997 the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding was set up to help pandas survive in the wild. The natural and created environment invites the animals to live in a natural setting, allow visitors a close-up look and encourage researchers to work towards increasing the wild population. The base started with only six giant pandas; they now have 64.

A museum provides detailed information about the pandas’ evolution and pathways lead around several enclosures where cubs wrestle with each other, play on recreational rubber tyres and swings, climb trees, hang from trees, fall from trees and push each other around in scenes resembling a boisterous schoolyard.

Other, older pandas lie around contentedly munching bamboo for up to 12 hours a day, consuming between 12kg and 38kg of it.

Older and wiser? In China, older people are revered and to be called elderly is a compliment, it shows respect for your maturity and wisdom.

If you aren’t as young as you once were, there are plenty of things to do in China. If you are still fit and healthy, well and good, but beware of a few pitfalls for young players!

There are still many squat toilets throughout China. If you aren’t too flexible in the ‘joints’ department, perhaps it’s best to restrict your visit to the larger Chinese cities where facilities are modern.

China is not always the easiest place to find your way around and if you are outside the major cities, transport and facilities are sparse and difficult to navigate. So, travelling in a group tour will be comfortable and you’ll know exactly what you’ll be getting and where you’ll be going.

First class travel on trains is comfortable and taxis are inexpensive; both are better than the crowded buses and subway trains.

High-risk areas for pickpockets are train and bus stations, city and long distance buses and hard-seat train carriages. Best not to do the ‘bargain seat trains’ as they can be dangerous on long distance trips. Stick to first class.

Always use the hotels’ safes. Also, the ubiquitous ‘bum bag’ worn by many older travellers is not only a bad fashion statement, it says ‘this is where my valuables are’. Wear a money belt, and only ever carry as much cash as you need on a daily basis.

Always be alert travelling in any foreign country – and at home – it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Visit: www.visitsichuan.org

The writer was a guest of Wendy Wu Tours www.wendywutours.com.au and flew Cathay Pacific Airways www.cathaypacific.com/au to Hong Kong connecting with its subsidiary Dragonair to Chengdu.