Three weeks in Chengdu: notes on slowing down

January 18, 2025 · travel · 7 min read

I flew to Chengdu for a three-day conference. I ended up staying for three weeks. I'm still not entirely sure how that happened, except that Chengdu has a way of making you forget you had plans.

The pace

Everyone warned me that Chengdu is slower than the coastal cities. They were right, but "slow" doesn't capture it. It's not sluggish or lazy — it's deliberate. People sit in teahouses for hours in the middle of a weekday. Mahjong tables appear on pavements at 2pm. Nobody seems to be in a hurry, and nobody seems to be apologising for it.

Coming from a city where busyness is a personality trait, this was disorienting at first. By day four, it felt like relief.

The food

I ate hotpot eleven times in three weeks. I kept a list. The numbing spice — the Sichuan peppercorn thing that everyone talks about — is real, and it's extraordinary. It doesn't just make food spicy; it makes your entire mouth feel like it's vibrating at a slightly different frequency.

Beyond hotpot: the dan dan noodles from street stalls, the rabbit heads (I tried them, I'm glad I did, I probably won't again), and the most perfect bowl of mapo tofu I've ever had, from a place with four plastic tables and no English menu.

The pandas

I went to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding expecting a tourist trap. I was wrong. Watching a panda eat bamboo for twenty minutes straight is, against all logic, one of the most calming experiences I've had. They are so completely committed to doing one thing. I think about this a lot now.

What I took home

Mostly a feeling. That it's possible to live in a big city without the constant low-level urgency that I've come to accept as normal. That sitting still is not the same as wasting time. That a good meal shared slowly with people you like is worth more than another evening optimising something.

I'm back now, and the pace of my regular life has already crept back in. But Chengdu is there in my head, like a proof of concept. A reminder that another speed exists.