A Chengdu day trip: Shangli Old Town in the morning, bobo chicken and the Grand Buddha in Leshan

Quick answer: yes, this is a real one-day loop: roughly 420 km all told, almost all of it on expressways, and everything worth stopping for is within a few minutes' walk of where you park. Leave at 8:00, walk the old town while it's still quiet, eat late lunch in Leshan, see the Buddha right after, and you're back in Chengdu for dinner.

I drive the long routes for a living, and this page is the opposite of those: the loop I do on a day off, or on the afternoon after dropping guests at the airport, when I want a proper lunch and an easy road. I wrote it down because people ask what to do when they have one day in Chengdu and no interest in spending all of it in the panda base queue.

Morning — out of the basin, into the valley

Leave at 8:00 and the city is behind you before the traffic wakes up properly. The expressway to Ya'an runs about two hours, and then the valley road north to 上里古镇 ⧉ is the only slow part of the day: half an hour of river-and-farmland, the kind of road where you end up behind a three-wheeler and stop minding.

Shangli is small — that's the first thing to know. An old way-station on the southern Silk Road and the tea-horse routes, a stone bridge or two over the river, lanes of Ming-and-Qing-era houses, and not much else, which is exactly the appeal. 韩家大院 ⧉ (a Qing-dynasty courtyard compound with the carving still intact), the twin chastity arches by the fields, and 二仙桥 ⧉, the high stone arch the whole town photographs from the riverbank. Two hours is enough to see it properly; less if you skip the courtyard, though I wouldn't.

If you skipped breakfast, Shangli has its own specialty: 哒哒面 ⧉, hand-slapped noodles with a bowl of braised pork on top. It's the local lunch, and it's good — just know you're eating again in Leshan in three hours, so pace yourself.

Why Shangli isn't crowded anymore

Older blog posts describe Shangli as mobbed, and they were right — for their time. The reason is pandas. In 2003 the giant-panda research base opened inside the Bifengxia scenic area, next door to Shangli. After the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, Wolong's pandas moved in while their home was rebuilt, and for years Bifengxia held the largest captive panda population in the world. Every tour bus to the pandas stopped at Shangli on the way, and the town filled up accordingly.

Then the map changed. Wolong's rebuilt base started taking its pandas back in 2012, the breeding center's center of gravity moved back toward Wolong and Dujiangyan, and the panda base that became a superstar — the one with its own subway planning guides — is in Chengdu. The base at Bifengxia never closed, and it's still worth a visit if you're in the area. But the crowds stopped detouring to Ya'an, and Shangli went back to being a town where people live. The base never moved; the crowds did. For a visitor, that's the best trade of this whole route: you get the old-town afternoon the old blogs wrote about, without the old blogs' traffic.

Afternoon — Leshan, and a late lunch that's the real destination

Back down the valley road to the expressway and east to Leshan, call it two hours. You'll arrive early-to-mid afternoon, which is perfect for 叶婆婆钵钵鸡 ⧉ — no queue at 2 p.m., and the cold skewers are exactly what the drive asks for. The brand started in the 1980s as a street cart in nearby Qianwei county, and the Leshan shop on East Street has been the main one since the early 2000s; it's the Leshan style of 钵钵鸡 ⧉, cold skewers soaked in red oil (or green Sichuan-pepper broth — get both and find out which side you're on).

The way it works is half the fun: find a table, walk to the fridge, pick what looks good, hand the plate to the staff with your table number, and order the rest by phone once you're seated.

After lunch: the Grand Buddha — boat or stairs, pick one

When you're done eating, head for the Buddha. There are two ways to see it: the stair path down beside the statue, or the boat, which shows you the whole thing from the river. Each shows you its own version, and each has its own queue; a one-day loop is only enough for one done properly, so decide in advance. To stand right next to it, take the stairs; to see it whole, sitting in the cliffs above the river, take the boat. Trying to do both "since you're here" usually means seeing both badly — and paying for it with dinner.

Tickets are normally bought in advance on the WeChat mini-program "Leshan Tourism" 大佛旅游 ⧉; around Chinese public holidays you may need to book several days ahead. If you can't get one, there are usually same-day VIP tickets at roughly 210% of the standard fare, which include a shuttle bus, less walking, and an entrance of their own.

At this pace you'll be done with the Buddha around 5 p.m., and back in Chengdu right on time for dinner.

Home

Leshan back to Chengdu is 140 km and change, under two hours if the expressway behaves. You're home for dinner, which sounds unremarkable until you've done the version of this day that ends at 11 p.m. This is the loop I recommend to friends who ask "I have one day and a car" — because everything on it is easy, and easy is the whole point.

Two things people get wrong here

• Booking Shangli like it's 2015. Half the day-trip schedules online still route tour groups through Shangli with the panda base attached, as if the crowds never left. On a weekday you'll share the lanes with residents and a handful of photographers. Arrive by 10 and it won't matter either way.
• Wanting both the boat and the stairs. The one place this loop genuinely asks you to cut something: each route has its own queue, and trying both usually means seeing neither properly. Pick one, and leave the other for a next visit — or for a proper two-day Leshan.

Taking photos at the right time

The only part of this route that really rewards timing is Shangli: mornings are for the lanes, before the vans arrive and while the stone flags are still holding last night's damp. The courtyard and the arches sit in narrow streets, so they shoot fine at any hour — it's the crowds, not the light, that decide your photos there. Midday on this loop belongs to lunch. If you're back through the valley road late in the day, the river fog starts to sit in around the farms, and that's the one frame I'd pull over for.

Questions people actually ask

Keep reading

The Buddha's tickets and the boat-versus-stairs choice are all in this post; for the version where the Buddha comes attached to Siguniangshan and Tagong, see day five of my five-day Sichuan loop. All the routes are listed on the routes page.

Honest notes

The photos on this page are mine, taken on my own run of this loop — Shangli as it is now. Distances and drive times are approximate road figures, not GPS traces, and the few kilometers from Ye Popo to the Buddha scenic area are an estimate too. The panda-base history above is from public reporting (Xinhua on the 2003 opening and the 2012 return to Wolong); if you know it differently, write to me and I'll correct it. Everything about what Shangli is like now, the noodle shop, and the 2 p.m. queue at Ye Popo is my own experience.