Chengdu & Chongqing: 7-Day Sichuan Itinerary

Jinli Ancient Street 锦里

Hours

Street open 24 hours; shops and snack stalls 09:00–22:00, bars later

Ticket

Free

Lights

Lanterns come on at dusk and switch off at 22:00. Dusk in Chengdu is late on the clock: about 20:00 at midsummer, about 19:50 in mid-August, about 18:05 in midwinter. The half hour after they light is the blue hour, when the sky still has colour behind the lanterns.

Full Jinli Ancient Street guide

Wuhou Temple 武侯祠

Booking

Required — opens 14 days — 文物区门票实行14天预售. Weekend, holiday and summer-peak slots go early; weekdays are usually available the day before. The window at the gate is the constraint on the day rather than the ticket itself: 5–10 minutes off-peak, 20–30 at weekends and through the summer peak.

Last entry

Admission stops 17:30 in the extended season, 17:00 otherwise — the museum states it as 停止入馆, and it is an hour before closing either way

Ticket

¥50

On a passport

Foreign visitors book with a passport — the ID-type selector takes 护照 and the interface runs in English, Japanese and Korean as well as Chinese. The turnstiles read mainland ID cards only, so you collect a paper ticket at the service window beside the main gate with your passport and the order QR code, then scan that in. Bring the passport itself; a photocopy or a photo is refused.

Getting in

Metro Line 10 to 武侯祠（锦里） station, exit A2 — ~220 m to the heritage-area main gate, the walk the museum itself quotes as three minutes. Line 10 phase 3 opened 2025-09-17; guides written before that date still route via Gaoshengqiao, which is a ~1 km walk.

Full Wuhou Temple guide

Kuanzhai Alley 宽窄巷子

Hours

Alleys open 24 hours; shops, tea houses and stalls keep roughly 10:00–22:00

Ticket

Free

Lights

No published schedule — the lights track dusk, which in Chengdu means about 6pm at the winter solstice and about 8pm at midsummer. The blue-hour window is the thirty minutes as they come on, while the sky still holds colour.

Full Kuanzhai Alley guide

Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding 成都大熊猫繁育研究基地

Last entry

clearing starts 18:00 (March–October) and 17:30 (November–February); the Panda Tower stops admitting at 16:30. The number that actually decides your day is not any of these — it is the 12:00 boundary between the two tickets.

Ticket

¥55 — one price, but see the session split in the hours block; the morning and afternoon tickets cost the same and are not worth the same

On a passport

A passport is an accepted booking and entry document — the operator names it alongside mainland ID, the HK/Macau and Taiwan permits and the foreign permanent-residence card. Two catches, both physical: you must carry the original document you booked with, and a QR code on its own does not admit you. The over-60 and other free tiers are verified against Chinese-issued certificates, so budget the full price. Booking through Ctrip is an authorised channel rather than a workaround.

Getting in

Line 3 to Xiongmao Avenue (熊猫大道), the station named for the SOUTH gate — leave by exit A and take bus D025, 198 or 198A to the Panda Base stop. This is the gate with the car park and the coaches, so it is also the queue.

Heming Teahouse 鹤鸣茶社

Last entry

no gate and no ticket — the park itself is open around the clock

Ticket

Free — both the park and the teahouse. You pay by the cup

On a passport

Nothing here needs an app, an ID or Chinese: you sit down, someone comes over, you point. Cash works. This is the least-friction cultural experience in the city, which is exactly why it lands so well with foreign visitors.

Getting in

Metro Line 2 (also Line 17) to People’s Park (人民公园), exit B — the station sits 270 m north of the teahouse, Amap-measured 2026-08-11. The teahouse is inside the park on the lake shore.

Full Heming Teahouse guide

Leshan Giant Buddha 乐山大佛

Status

The Nine-Bend Plank Path (九曲栈道), the historic descent, is closed for dangerous-rock remediation with no reopening date announced; the descent to the feet runs one-way down the Lingyun Plank Path (凌云栈道) instead. ⚠️ Note the naming trap that follows from it — Chinese sources still call the descent "九曲栈道" out of habit, so a 2026 write-up describing queues on the Nine-Bend Path is describing the Lingyun Path under the old name. Separately, the river cruise moves pier rather than stopping when the water drops: from around mid-November the Jiazhoudu pier by the north visitor centre closes and boarding shifts to the Wuyou dock at the southern end, while the ¥2 cross-river ferry (the 巨型睡佛 sightseeing line) does suspend for the season. Departure times shift with the water level and the weather all year, and heavy rain closes the scenic area outright.

Booking

Required — opens a rolling 7 days — the seventh day ahead is released at 18:00 each afternoon. There is no longer window to plan into, so advice to book ten days out for a Golden Week cannot be followed.. ordinary weekdays go 2–3 days out; weekends from May to September and the whole of the summer holiday need most of the 7-day window. The 09:00–11:00 slots are the first to go, often within a couple of hours of the 18:00 release. When the daytime ticket is gone the scenic area's own fallback is the night session, which is capped at 3,000 a night and is much easier to get.

Last entry

admission stops at 16:30 in peak season — two hours before the gate closes, and the number that actually governs a late arrival. The night session stops admitting at 21:30. Arriving after about 13:00 in peak season leaves too little margin to queue for the cliff descent and finish it.

Ticket

¥80 for the hill ticket (游山票), flat year-round — it covers the Buddha, the cliff descent, Lingyun Temple, Wuyou Temple and the Mahao cliff tombs

On a passport

Budget the full ¥80. Unlike Mt Emei — which does give individual foreign passport holders half price under its own concession policy — Leshan publishes no individual foreign-national tier, and the half price it does publish is for children and students. Two exceptions worth checking against your own case: Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan permit holders have had half price at both mountains since 1 May 2025, and for 2026 the scenic area gives inbound tour GROUPS (including HK/Macau/Taiwan groups) 50% off both the daytime hill ticket and the night Lingyun Hill ticket, outside Spring Festival, 1 May and 1 October. Bring the physical passport either way — the automatic gates do not read foreign passports, so entry is through the staffed lane.

Getting in

54 departures a day, first 06:15, last 21:49 (12306, sampled Sat 2026-08-22). The C intercity services are the cheap end — ¥27 on the 06:15 and 06:34 — and the G and D trains run ¥51–54. ⚠️ Two departures a day are not this journey at all: G8739 (11:00) and G8743 (18:53) reach the same station the long way round via Tianfu airport, Zigong and Yibin in 2h40 and 2h54, at ¥199 and ¥173 — roughly four times the fare for three times the time, under the same origin and destination.

Full Leshan Giant Buddha guide

Sichuan Opera at Shufeng Yayun 蜀风雅韵

Last entry

there is no late entry worth having: the face-changing and fire-spitting are set pieces inside a running programme, not a loop. Arrive 30–40 minutes early if you want the tea, the ear-cleaning and the backstage face-painting, which are most of the reason to pick this venue over a theatre.

Ticket

¥80–260 by seat tier — 壹品 VIP ¥260, 贰品 ¥180–200, 叁品 ¥140–160, 加座 ¥80–100; the mid-tier seats people actually book online run about ¥188–268

On a passport

What separates the rungs is not just distance from the stage: the top tier comes with the covered tea bowl, snacks and a costume-wearing photo, the middle with tea and a snack, the cheapest with tea and melon seeds. Nothing about the show needs Chinese — face-changing, fire-spitting, hand shadows and the rod puppets are all visual — so the cheap rung is not a compromised experience, it is a smaller one.

Getting in

Line 2 to Tonghuimen (通惠门), exit E, then about 400 m along Qintai Road — the venue sits inside Chengdu Culture Park and the box office address is given relative to that exit (Amap, 2026-08-10)

Full Sichuan Opera at Shufeng Yayun guide

Liziba Monorail Station 李子坝单轨穿楼观景平台

Status

Trains and the street-level viewing platform are unaffected, but the station itself is being rebuilt in stages until 30 December 2026 — the operator cites visitor numbers far beyond its design capacity. Exits 1 and 2 are each partly hoarded off through late September 2026, exit 3 and Hall B are shut until 31 August, and Hall A then closes from 1 September to 31 October as Hall B reopens. Follow temporary signage rather than a memorised exit number; the published diversion for a closed exit runs through the commercial level, so a route that looks like a shopping detour may be the only way through.

Hours

Platform open whenever trains run, ~06:30–23:00

Ticket

Free

Getting in

Line 2 to Liziba. Leave by exit 2 and follow the signs to 观景台 (guānjǐngtái, viewing platform) — measured against the exit POIs it is ~65 m from the platform against ~105 m for exit 1, which loops around.

Full Liziba Monorail Station guide

Hongyadong 洪崖洞民俗风貌区

Last entry

Site closes 23:00; shops keep roughly the same hours and some restaurants stop taking orders ~22:30

Ticket

Free

On a passport

The holiday booking flow is built around a Chinese ID card, and we have not confirmed whether it accepts a passport — but a staffed manual lane at the entrance registers visitors outside the smartphone flow (traveller-reported), which is the lane to ask for with a passport. Still treat a holiday weekend as the risk case.

Getting in

Hongyadong sits on the northern cliff edge of the Yuzhong peninsula, directly below the CBD.

Lights

Summer (roughly Jun–Sep) 20:00 · winter (roughly Dec–Feb) 18:00–18:30 · spring and autumn around 19:30. Off at 23:00 on the summer schedule (2026-06-04 notice); travellers report the winter switch-off nearer 22:30, and major holidays run later. Qiansimen Bridge’s own lights die before the building’s.

Full Hongyadong guide

Jiefangbei 人民解放纪念碑

Hours

24/7

Ticket

Free

Getting in

Jiaochangkou (较场口) on Line 1 and Line 2 is the nearest station. Two neighbours have their own stops and are NOT reached from Jiaochangkou: Kuixinglou is Linjiangmen (临江门) exit 2 on Line 2, and the top end of Shancheng Lane is Qixinggang (七星岗) exit 1 on Line 1.

Full Jiefangbei guide

Ciqikou Ancient Town 磁器口古镇

Hours

Streets open 24/7; most shops ~09:00–22:00 and many shut earlier. Old-town lanterns on ~19:30 (Oct–Apr) / ~20:00 (May–Sep); the back-street fish-lantern alley runs ~19:00–22:00.

Ticket

Free

Getting in

Line 1 to Ciqikou, exit 1. Nearest archway (金蓉门, ~230 m) enters the rebuilt back street; the old core’s own entrance is the couplet archway 黄桷坪牌坊, 720 m east, most of it along 磁器口步行街.

Full Ciqikou Ancient Town guide

Yangtze River Cableway 重庆长江索道

Status

Shuts for a full day roughly once a month for scheduled maintenance — usually a Tuesday or Wednesday, announced only about two to three days ahead on the operator's WeChat account (2026 dates on record: 31 Mar, 22 Apr, 27 May, 29 Jul). Heavy fog or storms can also suspend it at no notice — so keep the fallbacks in the plan: the ¥15 Liangjiang ferry, or the free viewpoints at Baixiangju and on the Dongshuimen bridge.

Last entry

Admission stops before closing — allow 30 minutes, i.e. be inside by ~21:30 in summer and ~20:30 in winter

Ticket

¥30 one-way / ¥50 round-trip

On a passport

A foreign passport is accepted at the visitor-centre window and at the self-service machines on site, so a passport holder is never locked out; the friction is that the WeChat account wants a Chinese number, and that a ticket bought outside 携程/同程 has to be exchanged for a queue number at the visitor centre rather than online.

Getting in

The north station is on Xinhua Road, beside Xiaoshizi (小什字) metro exit 5B. The visitor centre is one exit along, at 5A.

Full Yangtze River Cableway guide

Wulong Karst 武隆天生三桥

Ticket

¥260 for the Three Natural Bridges + Longshui Gorge combined ticket (¥210 Nov–Feb)

On a passport

Entry scans the document the ticket was bought against. Passport readers at the gates are reported slow or error-prone at peak times, so the staffed counter (paper entry voucher) is the reliable route. Carry the physical passport — in-park shuttles and spot checks ask for the original. Cash, WeChat Pay or Alipay; foreign-card terminals are unreliable.

Getting in

To Wulong South, since the Chongqing–Hunan high-speed line opened 27 June 2025. The old downtown Wulong station is a different station 5.5 km away on slower conventional services — check which one the ticket names.

Full Wulong Karst guide

Dazu Rock Carvings 大足石刻

Last entry

16:30 — ticket checking stops then

Ticket

¥140 for the Baodingshan + Beishan combined ticket (¥120 Dec–Feb)

On a passport

Tickets are real-name (实名制) — bring the passport you booked with. An international student card gets roughly half off.

Getting in

A tourist coach from Jiefangbei (08:00) and Hongqihegou (08:30) to the Baodingshan visitor centre — no transfer, but not direct either: a 30-minute stop at 昌州古城 is part of the product. ⭐ ONE return, 16:00 from the Baodingshan car park, and that is the deadline to plan backwards from — not the site's closing time, which is two hours after the coach has gone.

Full Dazu Rock Carvings guide