Luodai Ancient Village - Chengdu

I am always very interested to visit very quaint and ancient towns in China to observe their historical landmarks and architectural buildings.

I always planned my trips ahead by 6-12 months and had to study the places of their attractions. I thought Chengdu was only about Pandas and Hot Flaming Spicy Sichuan Food. I was taken by surprise that they have Mount Emei, Ancient Hakka Villages and a modern city bigger than Bangkok or Singapore.

1. We took a public bus transport from downtown Chengdu and visited this Luodai Ancient Village which has a Hakka community of over 23,000 people. It was a very cold morning at 3 degrees C and the bus took us less than 2 hours to reach this village, 20 km away.

2. This Hakka Village is the nearest to Chengdu and many voted it as the "Best Hakka Town" in China. It was built during the reign of Emperor Linchan during the Three Kingdoms Period - 1,800 years ago.

 3. My wife is always very supportive and followed me everywhere no matter how boring or smelly those places could be. In return, I would follow her to climb all the mountains she fancied, even if I had to drag my fat ass and corpse up the hills. Wakakakaka

 4. There were several clan houses in this village with individual ancient stages for their festive opera shows. This one has a museum too.

5. I entered their museum and was attracted to this old bridal chamber bed which was used during the Qing Dynasty. My immediate thoughts was Blogger SK's lavish traditional wedding and revealing his bride's veil on that Red Chamber Bed!

6. This wall with Dragon's motifs is definitely very old and beautiful.

 

7. Many old buildings have become commercialized but that doesn't matter to me. They need to survive and run businesses too. I did not post all the small shops selling food, snacks and souvenirs as they may take up 50 photos.

8. This is another old stage for operas. There were only 3 performers but no audience. I had goose bumps and walked away quickly.

9. The streets are narrow with local tourists walking on the real ancient slabs of granite rocks. China is so huge with the highest population in the world, therefore their locals are always visiting & discovering all their different provinces. It may take them a lifetime to cover all.

 

10. We entered another Clan House along the narrow alleys and I tried to cheer my wife up. I put up my own Sichuan Mask Changing show to entertain her! I was good and she clapped!

11. Everything is cheap there and I tried almost every small bites available. 

12. The ancient staircase was so unique and I spent 5 minutes gazing it. I imagined the brothel ladies were upstairs waving their silk scarves to lure some Chinese scholars to have tea.

13. Many female folks played mahjong tile games in back lanes!

The men played Chinese Chess in other back lanes. What a sight to behold.

 

14. This is an old pagoda and a rickshaw puller stood in the cold, waiting for clients.

 

15. I spent almost 3 hours in this tiny village looking up and down at their old walls of Chinese architecture.

  

16. This small unique restaurant hung all the dried and waxed goose, pork, buffaloes & even rabbits with stuffed intestines being strung across the ceiling above the patron's head.

 

 17. I was taken aback to see couples playing table tennis and danced merrily in the cold weather! In China, you could often see young & old ladies doing cha-cha, line dances and hip hop numbers along the boulevards in Chengdu, Beijing or even Shanghai.

 18. I walked into every back lane to smell and observe their lifestyles. Here, a seamstress was doing a good business!

19. This is the famous traditional oval shaped houses of the Hakka clans but I discovered that it was a newly built building. At least I got to see the interiors which was interesting.

 

 20. This village still maintains its laid back lifestyles with small vendors selling their wares.

21. I was shocked to see this huge furry pet for sale. Guess what animal it was?

A Hamster! Are you not shocked, Wenn?