Now that the Golden Week holiday is over, Wang Lei, a chef at a restaurant in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, can finally get a bit of rest.

To cater to the influx of holiday travelers, Zhongshuijiao (literally "Zhong family dumplings"), the restaurant where Wang works, purchased 1,000 kilograms of flour. The restaurant can accommodate less than 100 diners at time, but the holiday turnover was so high that the place was packed all day long.

The scene at Wang's restaurant was repeated in restaurants throughout the city as travelers from across the country descended on Chengdu to take in not only the breathtaking landscape, but also the 3,000 local specialty dishes and over 100 kinds of snacks.

Reservations at Chengdu's more famous snack shops started rolling in before May 1 Labor Day holiday.

For example, diners had booked all five of the private dining rooms at Longchaoshou (literally, Dragon family soup) three days before the holiday started. The 580 yuan (US$74) fee was no deterrent.

Many snacks in Chengdu are named after the surnames of their creators. Hanbaozi (Han family dumplings), Laitangyuan (Lai family glutinous rice balls) and Zhangliangfen (Zhang family cold noodles) are just a few of the treats awaiting visitors to Chengdu.

The more intrepid travelers tend to skip the big-name restaurants to try something novel.

Guo Jinjia, an office worker from Chongqing, found a small roadside restaurant specializing in so-called "fragrant bamboo sticks" near her hotel on downtown Chengdu's Yandao Street.

The sticks are served at hot pot-style restaurants where diners cook meat, seafood and vegetables on thin bamboo sticks by submerging them in boiling broth. The sticks, each of which costs just 1 jiao, are then dusted with chilli powder and eaten.

"It is nice to wash them down with a glass of beer. There are more than 150 kinds of food on sticks at the small restaurant. They satisfied my every expectation for fragrant, spicy food," said Guo.

For Le Ran, a university student from east China's Zhejiang Province, the most exciting snacks were the "three guns" at the food fair at the city's Cultural Park.

The treat earned its name from the distinctive sound of the snacks being made.

To make "three guns", a cook grabs three handfuls of glutinous rice dough and rolls them into balls, which he then throws at a chopping block. The balls bounce into a paper container filled with peanut powder. After mixing them with the powder, the cook places them into a small bowl and drizzles syrup made of melted sugar over them.

"The name is strange, but the taste is really good," Le said.

(China Daily May 8, 2007)