The Temple of Marquis Wu.
Dufu Thatched Cottage.
Neil Kelsall, a young tour leader from Manchester in the United Kingdom, took nearly 20 tourists from Britain to the Chengdu Research Center for Giant Panda Breeding in the northern suburbs of this capital of Sichuan province during their one-day stay in the city in late July.
Kelsall, who can write in Chinese, told China Daily that there was much coverage of the May 12 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, but members of his group felt Chengdu very safe.
More overseas tourists than in any other part of Chengdu visit the center, the world's only base of its kind in a metropolis.
From July 26 to 27, three pandas were born at the center within 14 hours, a mini baby boom for the rare animals. It was the first time in history that a captive panda population gave birth to so many cubs in such a short period of time. With the birth of the four cubs, the center is now home to 71 pandas - the world's largest captive panda population.
As Chengdu was unscathed in the devastating quake, which killed nearly 70,000 nationwide, its tourism sector picked up the pieces about a month after the quake, the epicenter of which was 92 km away in Wenchuan county.
The average occupancy rate of Chengdu's star hotels has risen to 60 percent and some had reached 80 percent, higher than before the quake, said Deng Gongli, chief of the Chengdu municipal tourism administration.
Since June 14, tour groups from Guiyang, capital of Sichuan's neighboring Guizhou province, Taiwan province and the Netherlands have visited Chengdu.
Deng's administration has signed contracts with numerous travel agencies in different parts of the country to bring more visitors, he said.
Visitors to Chengdu say their trip to the city is quite pleasant this time of year, for fewer visitors are in Chengdu as visitor attractions are not as overcrowded as before.
Du Fu Thatched Cottage, the Temple of Marquis Wu and Jinsha Site Museum are among the must-see sights for first-time visitors to Chengdu.
A thatched cottage in the western suburbs is the former residence of Du Fu (712-770), one of the three greatest Chinese poets of ancient times.
The site offers a traditional Chinese-style garden built where the poet lived.
Du has enjoyed lasting fame in China and his poems are included in textbooks and are prescribed readings for any foreign student majoring in Chinese literature.
Du lived in a period when one of China's most illustrious feudal dynasties was beginning a slide into decline.
A war fought by two rebel generals from 755 to 763 ravaged much of the country and accelerated the dynasty's degeneration.
Du, a native of Gongxian, Central China's Henan province, reached Chengdu in 759 to take refuge from the war. The following spring, he built a cottage by the Flower Bathing Brook with financial help from friends. He lived a peaceful life for about four years in the cottage, writing 240 of his existing 1,400 poems.
Du was a humanist. His writing style is revered both for its manifest sympathy for people's sufferings and resentment of injustice and corruption.
Almost every Chinese knows two of his most famous lines: "Meat and wine go bad in lordly mansions, while the roads are strewn with bones of those killed by the cold." The lines are still quoted to condemn the sharp contrast between the lives of the haves and have-nots.
In 761, the thatched roof of his cottage was destroyed in a storm, which led him to think of the plight of other poverty-stricken scholars. Rather than wallowing self-pity, he composed a poem urging shelter for all the poor that said he would die content in his leaking cottage if the goal were achieved.
In addition to the aura of history and culture, the cottage grounds covering nearly 20 hectares are spacious, quiet and elegant.
Those without interest in history and culture, it is still a nice place for a leisurely stroll or drinking in its teahouse, said Caroline Portsmouth, an English visitor.
Hidden in thick greenery, the Temple of Marquis Wu in downtown Chengdu looks more like a garden than a centuries-old temple.
"It is a very interesting place," said Sun Chenbei, a visitor from Beijing. The temple was built as a memorial hall to commemorate Zhuge Liang (181-234), prime minister of the Shu Kingdom (222-263), who was awarded the title of Marquis Wu. It also houses the tomb of Liu Bei, the emperor of Shu Kingdom.
"I've never been to a place with so many manuscripts of ancient legends," Sun said.
The temple is one of the best-preserved remnants of the Three Kingdoms period (220-280) - the Wei, Shu and Wu - some 1,800 years ago.
The three states were locked in constant war, trying to reunify the country while creating legends passed down from generation to generation.
Covering 14 hectares and enclosed by red walls, the temple boasts relics from several dynasties including 47 gilded or painted statues of important figures in the Shu Kingdom, more than 50 stone tablets, 60 couplets and 10 tripods, ovens, bells and drums.
The best known of the relics are a stone tablet made in the Tang Dynasty and a couplet written 106 years ago in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
Entitled "For Zhuge Liang, Prime Minister of the Shu Kingdom," the nearly 3.7-m-tall stone tablet has been known as the "Tablet of Three Wonders" since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Its text was written by Pei Du, a famous prime minister of the Tang Dynasty, its calligraphy was contributed by Liu Gongchuo, a famed practitioner, and its carving came from Lu Jian, a noted engraver. Liu and Lu also lived in the Tang Dynasty.
Written in 809, the text praises Zhuge's ability to manage state affairs and command the army, as well as his loyalty to the two emperors of the Shu Kingdom and his painstaking efforts to try to reunify the country. It compares Zhuge to the best prime ministers in Chinese history. Pei was known for his essays after serving as prime minister for three emperors.
Another famous literary work at the temple is "Conquering the Mind," a 106-year-old aphorism that is one of the most famous in China. It reads: "If a military strategist knows how to conquer the mind, a revolt can be suppressed accordingly. Since ancient times, people well versed in the art of war have never been bellicose. A leader can make mistakes if he does not make a correct assessment of the situation, being either too strict or lenient in implementing policies. Future governors of Sichuan have to take action after much deliberation."
It was written in 1902 by Zhao Fan (1850-1927), a native of Sichuan's neighboring Yunnan province, to advise his student Cen Chunxuan to not always take a hard line. As Sichuan's governor-general in the late Qing Dynasty, Cen often suppressed his rivals using the military.
In 1902, uprisings led by farmers, who called themselves the Boxers, began against the decadent Qing Dynasty in different parts of Sichuan. The Qing government's rule in Sichuan was threatened because of the size of the uprisings. The government in Beijing was so frightened that it sent Cen to Sichuan.
Cen, who believed in the ancient Chinese philosophy of "meting out severe penalties in hard times," prosecuted the Boxers to the fullest extent of the law, killing Liao Jiumei, their leader in Chengdu. As Liao was popular in Chengdu, Cen's acts aroused widespread dissatisfaction and hatred.
Zhao, who was also an official in Sichuan, felt that Cen's efforts were doomed to failure as they went against the will of the people. Although he had been Cen's teacher as a child, Zhao could neither criticize Cen nor approach him directly to urge a change in approach, for Cen was now his superior.
Zhao, noted for both his writing and calligraphy, wrote the couplet "Conquering the Mind" and had it hung in the Temple of Marquis Wu. He hoped that Cen would see the couplet and understand what he meant.
Many days passed after the couplet was put on display without Cen learning of its existence. Zhao eventually arranged a banquet for Cen in the temple as part of a spring outing. There, Cen read the couplet and was told its meaning. But the arrogant Cen was irritated with his former teacher's "offence" and demoted him, banishing him to a faraway place.
It was only after Cen suffered major setbacks several years later due to his hard line and was almost dismissed that he truly understood the couplet's meaning.
When the Qing government sent him to Sichuan to suppress the Railway Protection Movement in 1911, which helped trigger the Revolution of 1911, Cen correctly assessed the situation. This time, he did not suppress the revolutionaries who later overthrew the Qing government in the Revolution of 1911 and established the Republic of China. Instead, Cen cooperated with their leader Dr Sun Yat-sen, and contributed to the new republic.
The couplet's rich connotations attract many visitors in the temple, including top Chinese leaders. When the late Chairman Mao Zedong visited the temple in 1958, he stayed in front of the couplet for a long time and highly praised it.
Sharp-eyed visitors to Chengdu will notice the emblem of a circular gold leaf, featuring four flying birds surrounding the sun in many parts of the city.
It is on the top of the overpass of the People's Road South leading to the airport, on outdoor advertisements promoting the city's image and on the television screen when one tunes in to the Chengdu television station.
The emblem, which represents Chengdu, has been chosen as the symbol of China Cultural Heritage by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
The emblem's exquisite craftwork and its representation of ancient Chinese people's worship for the sun and the Chinese nation's enterprising spirit account for the decision, according to the administration.
The gold-leaf sunbird, believed to be about 3,000 years old, was excavated from the Jinsha Ruins in the western suburbs of Chengdu.
The Jinsha Ruins, which cover 4 sq km, include an area for holding sacrificial rites, a residential quarter for the nobility, a residential quarter for commoners and a graveyard.
Archaeologists hail the ruins as one of Sichuan's most important archaeological finds after the discovery of the Sanxingdui Ruins in 1929.
On February 8, 2001, builders were working at an apartment construction site in Jinsha village. Suddenly they found ivory and jade were amidst the piles of mud.
Since then, archaeologists have excavated more than 5,000 precious relics including gold, jade, bronze and stone wares as well as one ton of whole elephant tusks and tens of thousands of pottery and ceramic pieces.
Many of the relics unearthed in the Jinsha Ruins bear a strong resemblance to those at Sanxingdui.
Located in Guanghan, a city 40 km from Chengdu, the Sanxingdui Ruins were accidentally discovered in 1929 by a farmer digging a ditch in his field.
Since then, more than 10,000 relics, some of which date back 3,000 and 5,000 years, have been unearthed. The excavations have yielded what are considered some of the most significant archaeological discoveries in China in the last century.
The discovery of the Sanxingdui Ruins, whose site is believed to have served as the capital of several kings of the state of Shu, offers proof that Chinese civilization has diverse origins.
It can be said that Chinese civilization has several cradles - the Yellow River Valley, the Yangtze River Valley and the Sichuan Basin, where the Sanxingdui and Jinsha ruins are located.
According to archaeologist Yu Weichao, former curator of the Beijing-based Museum of Chinese History, the Jinsha Ruins are most likely to be the political and cultural center to which the ancient state of Shu moved from Sanxingdui.
After the sudden demise of the Sanxingdui culture some 3,000 years ago, the Shu king likely moved to areas around today's Jinsha Ruins in Chengdu, he said.
Many relics unearthed from the Jinsha Ruins including the sun-bird gold leaf are on display in the Jinsha Site Museum.