What's happening in Chengdu this week?

Plan your week around the panda base. At the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the pandas eat bamboo early and sleep through the warmer part of the day, which means the first two hours after the gates open are your real window to see them moving. On Saturday and Sunday, shuttle-cart queues tend to be long by 9am; Tuesday through Thursday they're usually far thinner. Tickets cost 55 CNY, about $8.20 at this week's rate of 6.6862 yuan to the dollar, and they're sold by real-name booking with your passport number, so book the night before. Metro Line 3 to Panda Avenue station and then a short taxi takes roughly 50 minutes from Chunxi Road.

The Sichuan Museum and the Chengdu Museum on the west side of Tianfu Square are closed on Mondays, but Du Fu Thatched Cottage and Wenshu Monastery stay open, so Monday naturally becomes a garden-and-temple day. Every afternoon Chengdu slows down for tea, and at Heming Teahouse in People's Park a bamboo chair and a glass of jasmine tea cost roughly 20 to 30 CNY, with no one hurrying you out before dark. The ear cleaners work between the tables; you'll hear the metallic ting of their tools before you see them. On weekend mornings the park's matchmaking corner fills with parents who pin their children's height, salary and birth year to open umbrellas.

Chengdu eats late. From Monday to Thursday, hotpot around Yulin and Jiuyanqiao draws mostly locals and you can usually walk in at 9pm, but on Friday and Saturday the famous hotpot rooms on Yulin Road often run waits of an hour or more, and the smell of beef tallow and Hanyuan peppercorns hangs in the street past midnight. Shaoye, the late-night skewer stalls, keep grilling until 2am or later. If the menu is a wall of characters, order yuanyang guo, a split pot with a mild broth on one side; the mala side will numb your lips for 20 minutes. Skip Kuanzhai Xiangzi at weekends, when the alleys move at a shuffle. On a weekday before 10am it is far calmer.

Chengdu's grey season runs through autumn, and a local saying holds that Sichuan dogs bark at the sun because it shows up so rarely. This afternoon's clear sky and 21.6°C reading is the exception, not the forecast, so expect overcast skies, damp air, and the odd drizzle this week, with mornings that tend to sit near 15°C. Pack a light rain jacket. The National Day holiday crowds have gone, and the big sights stay at their autumn quietest until New Year. Wenshu Monastery fills with incense crowds on the 1st and 15th days of each lunar month, but on other mornings the monastery's vegetarian canteen serves noodles for under 20 CNY.