Updated (6/6): Planning a trip to Langzhong? Check out my Langzhong travel guide for more information.
Before I left for Sichuan, I heard that the province was famous for its teahouses. But I couldn’t possibly have imagined just how ubiquitous they were. In Chengdu, every park has a teahouse or two where men and women congregate in the fresh air to drink tea, read newspapers and play cards or majiang. For the price of one cup of tea, you can buy a seat for an entire day. Games and snacks are BYO.
I found the majiang players in this photo not in Chengdu, but in the old town of Langzhong, a few hours northeast east of the capital. Our hotel overlooked a truly massive teahouse, with tables spilling out of the ground-floor building into the courtyard and almost into the street. On the May 1 holiday, the place was packed. This wasn’t the kind of place that saw many foreigners, and people stared every time we walked through the courtyard. But the click of majiang tiles never stopped.
This is the latest in a series of Friday “snapshots,” featuring photos from my latest travels in China and beyond. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed to automatically receive my latest updates.
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