Chengdu Lan Kwai Fong

This guide to Chengdu Lan Kwai Fong opens with a question: why does the Jinjiang River running past its neon bar terraces stay so calm, even after summer rains. It traces the water back to a governor named Li Bing, who tamed the wild Min River around two hundred fifty-six years before the common era, not with a dam but with a stone fish-mouth levee he carved with his son near what is now Dujiangyan. You'll hear how that same split river carried timber traders and grain boats past this stretch a century ago, long before the bars and clubs arrived. Sit by the railing tonight and watch the current move beneath the reflected neon.