Jinli Ancient Street

Jinli Ancient Street sits immediately east of Wuhou Shrine in Chengdu's Wuhou District, its entrance framed by a gate at 231 Wuhouci Street (Annex 1). Records describe a market street on this site as early as the Shu Han kingdom (221-263 CE) and later the Ming and Qing dynasties, when it functioned as one of the busiest commercial thoroughfares in Sichuan, trading in silk, tea, and salt along routes linking Chengdu to the wider region. The street seen today was reconstructed in 2004 on the historical alignment, using Qing-and-Ming-style timber-frame shopfronts, upturned eaves, lantern-strung eaves, and cobbled paving to recreate the atmosphere of old Shu commerce rather than preserve original fabric. Along its roughly 550-meter length, the street is organized into thematic sections: a food lane selling Sichuan snacks such as sanda pao glutinous rice balls and dragon's-beard candy, a crafts lane with sugar painting and clay figurine vendors, a teahouse quarter where Sichuan opera face-changing (bianlian) and shadow puppet performances are staged nightly, and a riverside walk along the Jinjiang canal. Because the street was built to evoke a historical function rather than exhibit original relics, there is no curated collection; its value lies in living folk-craft demonstration and continuity of the site's commercial identity from the Three Kingdoms era to the present. The buildings are modern timber-and-brick construction maintained to a consistent traditional-style standard, with no ongoing archaeological conservation, though the adjoining Wuhou Shrine grounds it historically. Evening is when the street is most atmospheric, its red lanterns lit against dark timber facades, drawing large crowds of tourists and local residents for the string of teahouses and street theater.