While we were lazing about Chengdu's parks and teahouses, we were unfortunately missing out on a huge number of regional delicacies and street treats. One of the first things I did after we decided to go to Asia was to read Fuchsia Dunlop's memoir of living in China. Her description of eating fried rabbit heads in Chengdu immediately enchanted me, and they soon topped my list of street foods to try. So it might be my greatest failure of the trip to have spent three nights in Chengdu without even a glimpse of a rabbit head. I finally saw an advertisement for them as we entered the train station on our way out of town, and I almost made an about face to rectify my oversight, but it was simply not to be.

That's not to say we didn't have some great little treats. Just nothing as exciting as rabbit heads! Chengdu's markets seemed to have an abundance of breads, buns, and cookies, as well as pre-cooked meats. One thing that I saw nowhere else were these steamed corn flour cones, which were hollow and fluffy. I am not sure if they're traditionally eaten with something else, but I ate one straight from the steamer, and it was warm, moist, and softly corny.

Another food we saw a lot of in Chengdu was street-side barbecue tables. I don't have a photo of this, but here's one of a similar meal earlier in our trip. This is one of those cuisines that can be found all over China, but I was particularly charmed by the place we ate it in Chengdu. In the evening, long folding tables pop up on sidewalks all over, covered from corner to corner with skewered meats and vegetables. You pick out what you want to eat on a tray, and pass it to the person behind the grill. Somehow you communicate whether you want it spicy (you do!), and then they pull out a shaker and liberally coat your selection in the most delicious mouth-numbing powder (the recipe for which, by the way, I would kill for) and then grill it while you wait in the twilight at your tiny sidewalk table, watching the neighborhood bike by. Selections include, among many, many, many other things, chicken legs, chicken heads, meat and offal cuts, whole fish, eggplant, cabbage, potato, and, perhaps most genius of all, battered and deep fried veggies. When your tray arrives you hunch over it and grab the still-too-hot food with your incisors, huffing and puffing to cool it and your spice-burnt lips. When you're done, someone comes by and counts your skewers (fancier foods might have several skewers each) and charges you one yuan for each skewer. It's a meal that's pretty unbeatable in every respect.

Lastly, we strolled in an appealingly gimmicky historical-reconstruction tourist alley — quite literally a tourist trap, as it appears to provide access between two major streets, but is in fact a giant, maze-like cul-de-sac. The treat of the day here were sugar candies poured or puffed into a variety of shapes. These were doodled out, but others were blown like glass. We didn't eat any, but they brightened our day nonetheless.