Skip to content
A little preparation. A much better adventure.Independent travel advice · Made for China
Save your trip
Menu
Book your trip

A taste of Chengdu

Heming Teahouse

鹤鸣茶社

Opened in 1923 and the oldest surviving teahouse in Chengdu, set in a west-Sichuan pavilion-style hall in People's Park with hundreds of bamboo chairs spread under the trees by the water. You pay for a covered gaiwan of jasmine or flower tea and the seat is then effectively yours for the afternoon; staff top up the hot water endlessly. Card players, pensioners, people with caged birds, roaming ear-cleaners with their tuning forks and long picks. This is the single best hour a visitor can spend understanding how Chengdu actually lives, and it costs almost nothing.

¥10-40 per person≈ US$1.49Qingyang, inside People's Park, 9 Citang Street (祠堂街9号); People's Park metro station (人民公园, Line 2) is at the park gate
Plan your meal Open map
Heming Teahouse (鹤鸣茶社), Chengdu
Photo: Daderot · CC0

Why come here

A place worth making time for

No restaurant award - it is not a restaurant. Known as Chengdu's oldest continuously operating teahouse, founded 1923, and the city's defining tea-drinking institution

The house favourites

What to order

Point at the Chinese. Staff will understand it even where the menu has no English at all.

  • Jasmine flower tea in a covered gaiwan (三花盖碗茶)
  • Roasted melon and sunflower seeds (瓜子)
  • Sweet glutinous rice balls (糖油果子 / 三大炮, from the stalls alongside)

What it actually tastes like

Nothing spicy at all - this is the place your palate recovers. Flower tea is lightly perfumed and sometimes faintly sweet; the snack stalls around the park sell deep-fried sugared rice balls that are very sweet indeed.

Allergens in this kitchen

peanutsesamesoygluten/wheat

This is the kitchen, not one dish. Woks, fryers, blanching water and utensils are shared in almost every Chinese restaurant, so for a serious allergy treat the whole premises as the unit rather than ordering around it.