China Guide
Sichuan and Chongqing
Huanglongxi
HUANGLONGXI, 40km south of Chengdu, is a charming riverside village whose half-dozen understated Qing-dynasty streets – all narrow, flagstoned and sided in rickety wooden shops – featured in the martial-arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The village is popular with Chinese visitors, in particular art students and groups of old ladies coming to pray for grandchildren to Guanyin, to whom all the village's temples are dedicated.
Buses (¥11.5) leave Chengdu's Xinnanmen bus station between 8.50 and 11am. From the highway bus stop, it's 500m through the quiet new settlement to the old village gate. All businesses are either shops selling irrelevant souvenirs or restaurants displaying grindstones for making one of Huanglongxi's specialities, douhua (soft bean curd). Nearby, two tiny nunneries contain brightly painted statues of Guanyin, Puxian and Wenshu.
Larger Gulong Si (¥1) has two main halls with similar statuary in a wobbly state of repair. There's an ancient banyan supported by posts carved as dragons; the former governor's court with a dog-headed guillotine for executing criminals; and an unusually three-dimensional, fifty-armed Guanyin statue in the right-hand hall.
Wandering around will fill an hour, after which you'll want lunch; the riverfront restaurants near the nunneries are best, serving douhua, fresh fish and crispy deep-fried prawns. You can also buy bamboo-leaf-wrapped packets of huanglongxidouchi, smoked salted soya beans, then sit munching them under willows at one of the outdoor teahouses.