Enjoy fantastic shopping in China in Chengdu!

Chengdu Main Shopping Center

Chengdu has a wonderful main shopping precinct. It is known as the Zongfu Road Shopping Zone.

It is a magnificent area of modern shops, shopping malls, restaurants, markets and tea houses.

A range of familiar western products are also available at good prices.

There are also smaller shops and arcades where you can bargain to obtain the best price.

The little narrow shopping malls that branch off the main malls and roads are particularly delightful.

They are full of little shops and stalls.

Chinese clothing in Western styles is cheap and plentiful.

Bargains in jewellry and other items can be got.

There are several good hotels in the area – popular with business people and tourists. They range from luxurious 5 star such as the Intercontinental to budget but clean 3 star hotels.

The hotels themselves have shops selling upmarket items such as clothing and Chinese stautes and ornaments.

Jinli Street

Jinli Street is a renovated (in old Chinese style) area near the centre of Chengdu.

I have seen several such places in China but this one is particularly well done - clean and interesting.

It is a 15 minute taxi ride from the city center (Zongfu Road) over the Jinjiang River.

There are several shops selling things to tourists all of the day and well into the night.

Many of the tourists are Chinese but you will see a few Westerners there as well.

You can buy just about anything there - art and craft goods, jewellry, clothes, souvenirs, Chinese and Western food.

Find the silk shop in the main street.

You will see silk being extracted from silkworms and weaved into material. You can buy lots of silk goods there.

And if you are desperate for coffee – there is even a Starbucks there!

Jinli Street is full of small shops and stalls selling authentic Chinese goods.

Minority groups as well as Han Chinese sell locally made items - some useful, some of novelty value but all exquisitely made.

There are some large restaurants but also many smaller food stalls for a quick snack so as not to interrupt your shopping!

If you are really brave and want something different – you can even have your ears cleaned!

This is something I have seen in hotels and hairdressers in Sichuan but also in Jinli Street.

It is not for the faint hearted!

A man dressed in white with a miner's lamp peers deep down into the earhole. Then he cleans the ear passage with a rather long thin blunt needle.

I don't really recommend it but the Chinese seem to like it.

By the way, don't think of Jinli Street as being overun by Western tourists. Most of the tourists are Chinese.

Wenshu Temple

You wouldn't think of shopping in China when visiting a Buddhist Monastery. But displaying the entrepreneurial spirit that is so prevelant in China today, there is a shopping precinct outside the walls of the monastery.

It is a renovated old style commercial area with souvenir and clothing shops, restaurants and bars.

It has been well done. The streets are paved and clean. The shops are newly built in the old style. There is a variety of goods to be bought.

It is great for shopping.

It is not as popular as Jinli Street so there are less people.

But the shopping and eating is just as good.

One of the highlights is watching Chinese women weaving silken material.

There is lots of silken material for sale in this area.

You can watch the silk being weaved right in front of your eyes.

Then you can walk across the road into the shops and buy silk shirts and scarves which have been locally made.

There are a lot of silken materials for sale in this area.