---
title: "Mount Qingcheng Tea Afternoon in a Private Ravine | LyrikTrip"
description: "The afternoon half of Qingcheng: a private ravine behind a 300-year suspension bridge, old-tree tea and pastries, a stream you can stand in — and no cable-car queue anywhere in it."
type: "experience"
source: "film"
url: "https://www.lyriktrip.com/en-GB/experience/qingcheng-ravine-tea-afternoon"
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![A plank walkway following a stream up a green ravine on Qingcheng's outer mountain](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/6a9abbc78053.webp)

Qingcheng · An afternoon, booked on its own

# An afternoon *with nothing to do*

A private ravine behind a three-hundred-year-old suspension bridge on Qingcheng's outer mountain: old-tree tea, pastries brought to wherever you sit, and a stream you are allowed to stand in.

- Where: A ravine on Qingcheng's outer mountain · Dujiangyan · about 70 km west of Chengdu
- How long: An afternoon · Usually paired with the outer-mountain temple morning
- Getting in: Driven to the door · The back road takes a pickup, not a coach
秘境

LyrikTrip · a standalone afternoon

## Bridge*& Brew*

- An afternoon
- A 300-year bridge
- Old-tree tea and pastries
- No queue in any of it

## What you get

### An afternoon, *and what you actually get out of it*

### You'll see

- **The oldest suspension bridge on Qingcheng**, right behind the kitchen
- A ravine with a stream running through it, reachable on foot
- The spot **CCTV chose over Dujiangyan** for its Chengdu city film
- In winter, the same ravine under snow

### You'll drink

- **Old-tree tea**, brought out to wherever you have decided to sit
- Pastries alongside — nothing to order, nothing to time
- Water cold enough in August to be the entire point

### You'll hear

- Why the host stopped selling food and started selling the setting
- That the teacher whose 2015 resignation letter went viral came here first
- Almost nothing else — **that is the product**

### You'll take home

- An afternoon where nobody asked you to be anywhere
- Photographs from a bridge that is genuinely three hundred years old
- Children who spent four hours in a stream and slept in the car

## Act I — Chengdu's back garden

![Layered forested ridges on Qingcheng's outer mountain](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/87cea549f029.webp)

![Mist sitting in the trees on the mountain](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/4a7344c1688d.webp)

![Lidded gaiwan cups set out on a wooden tea table](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/650f4c5c8019.webp)

Qingcheng has a second name locals use and brochures don't: *Chengdu's back garden*.

The air up here is measurably better than the city's. Chengdu officials buy houses on this mountain and come up to sit out the summer; so does everyone else who can.

After 2020 the guesthouses and the outdoor tea places multiplied, and the outer mountain quietly became *the good half*.

## 01 — The host

![A covered wooden walkway above a mossy cascade on the mountain](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/384cf791e405.webp)

14:10 Whose place this is

### “So I'll sell the setting”

A private kitchen first · a designer by training

The person who runs it is a friend of ours who trained in natural aesthetics and started out doing a private-kitchen restaurant here. Then he looked at what was behind his own building and worked out that the food was not the product. His words, roughly: *fine — then I'll sell the setting.* Pastries and old-tree tea are what he serves in it.

## 02 — The bridge

![The stream in the ravine the bridge crosses, under the rock inscription](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/e851a32d5a3c.webp)

14:30 Directly behind the kitchen

### The oldest bridge on the mountain

Ninety seconds across · and it moves

Qingcheng's oldest suspension bridge crosses the ravine right at the back of the property. It moves, in the way these always do. It is also, unsurprisingly, the single most photographed thing anyone does here — which is fine, because the crossing takes about ninety seconds and then you have the other side to yourself.

## 03 — Under it

![Water falling into a clear pool in the ravine on Qingcheng's outer mountain](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/4f92bffa2b63.webp)

15:00 You can go down

### A stream you're allowed to stand in

Cold water in August · snow in January

The bridge and the ravine are one place — you cross, and you can climb down to the water. In summer that is the entire point: children in the stream, adults with their feet in it, nobody hurrying anyone. In winter the same ravine takes snow, and is arguably better.

## 04 — What's served

![Whole tea leaves opening in a white gaiwan](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/9324b59c6182.webp)

15:30 While you sit

### Old-tree tea and something sweet

Brought out to you · no menu to work through

Tea from old trees, and pastries, brought out to wherever you have decided to sit. There is nothing to order and nothing to time. If you have come off the mountain from a morning at the temple, this is deliberately the opposite shape of afternoon.

## Why not the front mountain

### The same mountain, *and no queue in any of it*

Qingcheng, the way most people do it

- Sightseeing bus, then cable car, then a climb anyway
- In summer you queue against the whole of holiday China
- The front mountain tops out at 1,050 m — hot, and no shade in the line
- Lunch means queueing again
- By four o'clock you are finished, and not in a good way

This afternoon

- Driven in, then nothing further is asked of you
- No cable car to fight for, no table to wait for
- Shade, moving water, and a bridge that is three hundred years old
- Children can be in the stream all afternoon
- Back in Chengdu rested instead of wrecked

## Who else chose this spot

![Forested hills above still water on the quiet side of the mountain](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/3e62b839e6e1.webp)

Not our claim — theirs

### State television came to film Chengdu *and picked this ravine*

When CCTV made its Chengdu city film, it did not shoot Dujiangyan and it did not shoot the front mountain. It came here, and put the actress Cecilia Yip — Xu Xian in *The Legend of the White Snake* — on camera in this ravine.

And in 2015, when a teacher's resignation letter — *the world is big and I want to see it* — went viral across China, this was the first place she went.

We have looked, and we cannot find anyone selling the same afternoon. That is unusual enough in this market to be worth saying plainly.

## The afternoon, unrolled

### What the afternoon is made of

溪谷 · 茶桌 · 老树茶 · 空气

![A clear pool below the falls](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/91941b145799.webp)

**The ravine**溪谷 · you can climb down to it

![A wooden tea tray with cups, seen from above](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/889f8beab0c5.webp)

**The table**茶桌 · wherever you decide to sit

![A row of lidded gaiwan cups on a wooden shelf](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/52ca8680bde7.webp)

**Old-tree tea**老树茶 · brought out to you

![A pavilion above still water among the trees on Qingcheng](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/72447c5da774.webp)

**The air**空气 · measurably better than the city's

## What a family did with it

“They flew in from Amsterdam with the kids, end of July, the worst of the heat. The only thing they asked for was: not in the sun, and nothing to think about. They spent the whole afternoon in the stream and went back to Chengdu happy. That request comes up more than any other and almost nobody has an answer for it.”

Recounted by the Chengdu team

## Practicalities

- Duration: An afternoon
- Usually paired with: A morning at the outer-mountain temple
- Getting there: Driven in — the road takes a pickup, not a coach
- Included: The setting, old-tree tea and pastries
- The stream: Wadeable in summer; snow in winter
- Booking: At least two weeks ahead — weekends fill out
- Private hire: The whole place can be taken over
- Alternative: A private hot spring instead, if the day has run long
## End card

![The plank path along the stream, at the end of the afternoon](https://cdn.lyriktrip.com/s/4da58c46ef5f.webp)

### Book *the afternoon*

Half a day on its own. Tell us a date — weekends fill, so two weeks ahead if you can.

[**Start planning](/contact)