China Guide
Sichuan and Chongqing
Sichuan University Museum
Opening time: Daily 9am–4pm
Price: ¥10
Address: Southeast of the centre (bus #19 or #335 to the university's east gate)
Sichuan University merits a visit for its excellent museum, donated in the 1920s by American scholar D.S. Dye. Slightly dry ethnology exhibits include Qiang, Yi and Miao textiles, and a room devoted to Tibetan religious artefacts – silverwork, paintings and a human thigh-bone flute. Chengdu's once-famous brocades also feature, some made into wedding costumes and coverings for an elaborate Qing bridal sedan; there's also a model tearoom with shadow-puppet theatre (piying shi, "skin-moving theatre" in Chinese), the walls covered with heroes, villains and mythical beasts, all made of flat pieces of leather snipped and pierced like paper cutouts.