Jianshe Alley
Narrow food alley of charcoal grills and street stalls near a university, famous for roast trotters and late-night queues.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Jianshe Alley in Chengdu follows a street vendor named Xu Liang, who set up a charcoal cart around twenty ten in a backstreet squeezed between university dorms, chasing skin that cracked like glass on a roasted pig's trotter. It moves down the same three-hundred-meter alley to meet other cooks obsessed with a single dish, among them Zhou Qianqian working crisped rice and fried potato, and a cook nicknamed Ye Popo boiling bobo chicken. You'll hear how students turned a backstreet they joked was a graveyard into the alley's smoky center of gravity. Come at night, when the charcoal smoke and queues are thickest.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Wangping Street
Riverside food lane of red lanterns and sizzling stalls, named from a decades-old wish for peace.
奎星楼街
Narrow former mansion row of gated courtyard compounds, now a night-food lane of skewers and noodle stalls.
Yulin West Road
Buzzing bar-and-food lane where a hit folk song sent fans searching for a street that does not exist.
Mengzhuiwan Neighborhood
Riverside neighborhood reborn from a secret nineteen-fifties electronics factory zone into a night-market food and culture block.
Sichuan University Wangjiang Campus
Historic university quad of red-brick halls, lotus ponds and eight bustling student canteens.
Qingcheng Houshan
Farmhouse valley of waterfalls and caves where locals stew ginkgo nuts with mountain chicken.