There are a lot of places to visit in / around Chengdu, depends on how long you plan to stay here and what your interest is, I hope following information can give you some help.

If you just have a short stay in Chengdu and can spend one day for sightseeing, of course the first choice is go to see the pandas, besides there are still quite a lot choices.

City sightseeing:

Option 1. Panda Breeding Base + Divine Light Monastery + Sanxingdui Museum

Option 2. Panda Breeding Base + Wenshu Monastery + People's Park + Kuan & Zhai Lane area

Option 3. Panda Breeding Base + Dufu Thatched Cottage + Wuhouci Memorial Hall + Jinli old street & Tibetan Culture street

Option 4. Panda Breeding Base + Dujiangyan Irrigation System

Option 5. Panda Breeding Base + Huanglongxi Old Town

Option 6. Luodai Hakka Old Town + Longquan Fruit Base and Landscape (highly recommend in Spring for flower)

Option 7. Mt. Qingcheng trekking（Daoism Holy Mountain) 

Option 8. Leshan Grand Buddha

Option 9. Longevity countryside trekking

Option 10. Mt.Mengding Tea making 

Option 11. Bifengxia Panda Center and Shangli Old Town

Option 12. Pingle Old Town and Bamboo Sea

If have two or 3 days besides Chengdu, then you can do:

Option 1. Leshan & Mt. Emeishan

Option 2. Qingcheng Back Mountation

Option 3. Yibin Bamboo Ocean and Lizhuang

Option 4. Zigong Dinosaur City and Salt Museum

Option 5. Langzhong Three Kingdom Town

Option 6. Dazu Stone Carving

Option 7. Taoping Qiang Village and Lixian

Option 8. Wolong Nature Reserve

Option 9. Xichang Moon City and Qiong Lake 

Option 10. Xiling Snow Mountain and Hot Spring

If you have 4 or 5 days, then you can do:

Option 1. Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong National Park

Option 2. Songpan Horse Trekking

Option 3. Siguniang Mountain trekking

Option 4. Hailuogou Glacier Park

Option 5. Kangding-Tagong-Danba Kham area

Option 6. Lhasa Tibet

Option 7. Three Gorges along Yangtse River

Option 8. 

If you have 6 to 10 days, then you can do:

Option 1. Kangding-Litang-Daocheng-Yading National Park

Option 2. Kangding-Tagong-Ganzi-Xiong-Litang

Option 3. Kanging-Tagong-Ganzi-Dege

Option 4. Leshan-Mabian-Meigu-Zhaojue-Butuo-Xichang

Option 5. Chengdu-Xichang-Lugu Lake

If you have more than 10 days here, then you can consider to rent a flat and find a local spicy girl friend and learn how to be a excellent son-in-law of Sichuan.

Of course all above options can be combine together based on your time and interest, if you need any advise or help on trip design and arrangement, please feel free to contact with us. 

Things to do in/around Chengdu, reccommended by Haba Yefei
1. Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Base
A must see place in Chengdu.
Best time for visiting: from 8am to 11:30am when they are enjoying their breakfest and most active in the day.
Best season: Pandas dislike warm temperature, from June to Augest the temperature are too warm for them,so it’s not a good time to visit. Good season is from December to May of the next year when the cubs are 3 months to 8 months old,only during this season you can see the most cute and active panda cubs.
Note: Pandas are only born during July to September
2. Qingcheng Back Mountain
Different from the well known and over touristy Qingcheng Front Mountain, the Qingcheng Back Mountain is a very peaceful and relaxing mountain, 70 km west to Chengdu. It’s my favorite mountain around Chengdu,with beautiful forest,clean stream,pretty waterfall,peaceful
Temples and quiet villages.And it’s closed to the Panda Nature Inhabitancy.
3. Sichuan Local Food
Sichuan food is the best in China with diversity of flavor. If you love spicy food,Chengdu will not disppoint you. Should eat in a local restaurant, the hotpot in Shujiuxiang Restaurant(蜀九香) is my favorate, avoid eating in Jinli Street or any other touristy place,the food there are horrible.
4. Ya’an Bifengxia
The Ya’an Bifengxia Panda Breeding Base is located in a beautiful mountain with very pretty valley, waterfall and forest. Do not miss the wonderful hike in the valley(takes one hour)!
5. Leshan Giant Buddha
It may take a couple of hours to queue in a long line in the mountain where the buddha located,so taking a boat to admire the buddha is another good option.And you can have a best
view of the whole Buddha in the boat.
6. People’s Park
If you want to see the real local life in Chengdu go to People’s Park, where you can see how people enjoy their leisure, Chinese traditional dancing,Tibetan Dancing,singing, tea house,ear massage,and most funny is the fashion show by the ordinary people who are doing the catwalk on the red carpet! Don't miss the BLIND DATE CORNER,where people hang on the papers on trees writing their own or their Childern's personal detail including age,job,gender,height,personal finance situation. Come on you single guy,

find your wife/husband the day when visiting the People's Park! Hahaa

Best time to go there is 2pm to 4:30pm when people are taking activities in the park.
7. Qingyanggong Taoist Temple
Sichuan is the birth place of Taoism,and the Qingyanggong is one of the Olddest Taoist Temple in China.The Chinese Traditional architectures built 300-500 years ago are still in good shape.
8. Sichuan Opera
Only little sing in the show,it’s more like a play with face-mask changing,fire spiting,shadow and puppetry. Time is 8pm-9:30pm
9.  Emei Mountain
    It’s one of the 4 sacred Buddhist Mountain in China,also a site of UNESO World Culture Heritage.
The over touristy and crowded Golden Summit and Wannian Temple are not reccommended.
The scenery in the Emei actually are not that special,and most of the days there are quite foggy and wet,so you may quite possible seeing nothing in the mountain but temples. For the people who are interested in Buddhist temple strongly recommend:
Take a bus to Wuxianggong from the Baoguosi(20min),then hike down from the Wuxianggong to Fuhu Temple(伏虎寺), the 10 km hiking takes about 3 hours.The scenery on the way is quite pretty,and you will see many over 400 years old big buddhist temples on the way without many tourists. Another advantage to do this hiking is that you don’t need to pay for the 150 Yuan entrance tickets to the mountain.
10. Ya’an Shangli Old Town
The old town is on a high mountain surrounded by rivers,it is located at the gate way to Tibet. 25 km away from the Bifengxia,it’s a great conbination to visit the Bifengxia and the Shangli Old Town in one day. The 300 years old Han’s Mansion in the town is worthy for a visit.

So an ideal itinerary could be like below:
Day 1,Visit the Panda breeding Center in the morning,and Qingyanggong and People’s Park in the afternoon,with Sichuan Opera in the evening after a dinner in a Sichuan local restaurant.
Day 2, Hike in the Qingcheng Mountain
Day 3, Visit the Leshan Giant Buddha and the Emei Mountain
Day 4, Ya’an Bifengxia in the Moning and Shangli Old Town

There are 2 Panda Breeding and Research Base in Sichuan Province. One is Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base, the other one is Ya'an Bifengxia Panda Breeding Base.  

The Chengdu Breeding Base was founded at 1989,and Ya'an Bifengxia opened at 2003.

Many tourists are quite confused  which one should visit. I would like to give my opinion:

Basicly I don't think the setting between the Ya'an Bifengxia and Chengdu Breeding Research Base are much different. Pandas in  both of the 2 places are only living inside the separated enclosures with trees and lawn growing well.The Breeding Bases are divided into nursery enclosure,teenager,sub-adult,adult enclosures. Some of the enclosures seems smaller than 100 ㎡,but most of the enclosure are big enough for the pandas to do exercise,Actually, pandas in the enclosures are no much activity, the 2 principal body exercise are eating and sleeping,and as  getting older,they do less exercise and sleep more.

The biggest difference between the 2 Breeding Base is the way to access.You have to spend 2.5 hours to reach the Bifengxia from Chengdu(150km), but only 30 min taxi ride  to Chengdu Breeding Base from Chengdu down town,so if your time is sufficient , go and visit both, if not skip the Bifengxia. Spend more time in exploring the Chengdu Base,pay a visit to the  No.2 enclosure and the Moon Nursery up to the hill,you will find the Base is more like a pretty park with peaceful nature setting. The quantity in Chengdu is bigger and pandas are cleaner.Because the Ya'an is a rainy city,the pandas there are quite muddy. I estimate the quantity of Pandas in Bifengxia is no more than 25,which is only half of  that in Chengdu Base.

One of the advantage of Bifengxia is the lower temperature because of the high altitude there.The temperature in Chengdu could be as high as 34℃ in Summer(July-August), Because Pandas adapt to cold environment, Bifengxia is a nice place for them to escape from the hit during Summer.

The one thing you can do in Bifengxia is that you can have a wonderful hiking in the valley  with pretty waterfall and forest.Do not miss it ! 

The admission fee to Chengdu Breeding Base is CNY58/PP,and CNY118/PP to Bifengxia.