IMAGES: JIANG XIAODAN; GETTY; ALAMY; JI YONG


EAT CHENGDU


In southwest China, the ancient teahouses of the Sichuan provincial capital are being reimagined as hipster hangouts where centuries-old drinks menus meet spicy dumplings and Michelin-starred dining


WORDS: QIN XI E


It’s barely 9am when I slide into a bamboo armchair at Heming Tea House in Chengdu’s sprawling People’s Park. This century-old stalwart is one of the oldest teahouses in the megacity that I called home until I was nine. While I was growing up here, in one of China’s oldest tea-growing areas, many weekends were spent in an open-air teahouse like this one. While adults played games of mahjong and


the kids ran riot, roving hawkers carrying heavy baskets balanced on bamboo shoulder poles would come round selling snacks. The most famous of these is dan dan mian (shoulder pole noodles), where a nest of cold noodles is placed on a hot and tongue- numbing mala chilli oil base, topped with spring onion and minced meat, then mixed and greedily devoured. But as I sip my grassy mao feng green tea,


I’m struck by how unusually busy it is. Hordes of tourists with phones in video mode stream past the chairs crammed under teak pavilions and beige parasols. Most seats already filled by pensioners putting the world to rights or families cracking into toasted sunflower seeds. A group of photography students is playing


cards next to me, their backs turned on a pile of cameras carelessly stacked on a spare chair. I lean over and ask why there are so many people here on a weekday. One of the students looks up and tells me Heming has lately


gained wang hong (‘internet fame’) with Chinese travellers — the local expression for going viral. Later, I head to Lao Chuzi Sichuan


Restaurant for a family gathering. The low-key restaurant and teahouse on the top floor of a four-storey office block isn’t particularly well known, but my uncle picked it because it’s a favourite in his neighbourhood, and it serves a stellar line-up of Sichuan dishes, including garlic-infused fish, fragrant aubergine and thin slices of poached pork served with a drizzle of sesame-laced chilli sauce. I bring up the wang hong phenomenon.


“There are wang hong places everywhere now and business is booming,” my uncle tells me, noting a similarly popular place down the road: 11th Street. Later, we stroll over to take a look. Amid the low-rise residential blocks is a row of a dozen or so two-storey buildings, their exposed wooden beams and pitched roofs incongruous with the more modern surroundings. Each houses a hole-in-the-wall joint; their names — like Xiangxiang Mian (‘alley noodles’) or Du Youyou Boboji (‘Du Youyou’s spicy skewers’) — advertise their specialities. Wooden tables and bamboo chairs spill onto the street in front, where there are as many people taking photos as there are noisily eating. “These all used to be teahouses,” says my uncle, who’s lived in the neighbourhood for


Clockwise from top left: Braised mapo tofu in wild mushroom sauce with wild rice at Mi Xun Teahouse; Chengdu’s century-old Heming Tea House, in People’s Park; cups of tea at Heming; Mi Xun’s head chef, Steven Tang


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