锦里

The guide to Jinli in Chengdu opens on the reconstructed lane's reopening in October 2004, then reaches back nearly two thousand years to the kingdom of Shu, where the strategist Zhuge Liang faced a war he had no gold or farmland to fund. It follows how Sichuan's brocade weavers and a government official called the Jinguan turned silk into money for that fight, and how this exact riverside quarter got its name from the trade. Listen for how the old workshops here connect to a Qing-era temple that helped rebuild the street you're walking through today.