Living Old Towns of China: The Main Street and the Second Lane

01Living Is Not Old

What is a living old town in China, as opposed to a tourist one?

An old Chinese town is not the same thing as a living one, and this page is only about the second kind.

The test is simple and the survey behind this page applied it to every candidate in the country. A town is alive when the old houses, the old street plan and the people who live there today still share one space: when someone walks home with vegetables through a Ming 明, 14th to 17th century gate, when the teahouse under a Qing 清, 17th to early 20th century roof is full of local old men, when the barber and the grocer on the corner have been there for decades. It is not alive because it has a heritage plaque, a five-A rating or a famous name. The survey's own phrase is that history there is a container for life, not a backdrop for it.

By that test the survey kept some five hundred places across all thirty-one mainland provinces, from a whole walled county town to a single lane of tenements inside a modern city, and it sorted them into four shapes: the old city, the old town, the historic street, and the old neighbourhood inside a big city, which is the largest group after the towns. It set aside another seventy-odd famous places as tourist towns, rebuilt or emptied, and lists them separately so that nobody sells them as living. Nearly three quarters of what it kept scores as both alive and lightly commercialised, and the survey says plainly that this is the result of its own selection, not a description of China's old towns in general.

Two things follow for a visitor. The first is that the famous name is a poor guide: the survey's top eleven include places most foreigners have never heard of, and its list of emptied-out towns includes several that every guidebook recommends. The second is that the question to ask at any old town is not "how old" but "who still lives here", and the answer is visible at seven in the morning.

The rest of this page is arranged by that answer. How to tell the main street from the lane behind it; the eleven places that pass every test; the walled towns, the water towns, the old quarters of the big cities, the merchant ports, the living minority quarters; the hundred that China loves and the English internet has not found; the famous ones, honestly; and how long to give each.

02The Second Lane

How do you find the real life in a Chinese old town?

Every Chinese old town has a street for you and a lane for them, and the whole art of visiting one is knowing which is which.

The survey scores the two things separately. One score is for life: whether residents still live there, whether the fabric is real, whether there is a market, a trade, a festival, a night that belongs to the neighbours. The other is for commerce, on a scale from almost none to almost nothing else. Put the two together and every place falls into one of four boxes: alive and quiet, alive and busy, empty and quiet, empty and busy. The first box is the hidden treasure. The second is the famous town that is still worth it. The third is the ruin with a plaque. The fourth is the tourist street, and the survey moves the worst of those out of its core list altogether.

The famous towns that pass are almost all in the second box, and they pass for one reason. Pingyao 平遥's south street 南大街 is lanterns and souvenir shops; the lanes behind it hold ten thousand residents. Pingjiang Road 平江路 in Suzhou 苏州, in Jiangsu 江苏, is a promenade; the lane one block east is washing on poles. Xi'an 西安's Muslim Street 回民街 is a queue of tourists; Sajinqiao 洒金桥, one street over, is a queue of locals for cured beef at seven. Chengdu 成都's Kuanzhai Alley 宽窄巷子 is a brand; Paotongshu Street 泡桐树街 beside it is a neighbourhood. The survey's three rules, which this site adopts, are: judge the buildings on the main street and the life in the second and third lane parallel to it; find the wet market 菜市场, because that is where the town is anchored; and go before nine or after nine at night, because the daytime belongs to the visitors.

Commerce is not the enemy. A town at level four or five on the scale, with a busy main street, can still be entirely alive two lanes back, and Pingyao, Quanzhou 泉州, Chaozhou 潮州, Shaoxing 绍兴 and the Lhasa 拉萨 Barkhor 八廓街 all score that way. Shops do not kill a town. Removal does: the residents are bought out or moved out and the houses become stock. The survey's cards record which towns subsidised their people to stay and which cleared them, and that single fact predicts everything else.

So the question at the gate is never "is it commercial". It is "where is the lane", and "who is buying vegetables in it".

03The Eleven

Which are the best old towns in China for a foreign visitor?

The survey found only eleven places in China that pass every test at the top level, and the list is not the one a guidebook would give.

Three are famous. Pingyao 平遥, the complete Ming-Qing county town in Shanxi 山西, walled and inhabited, where the merchant banks and the residents' courtyards still share the same streets. The Barkhor 八廓街 in Lhasa 拉萨, the circuit of lanes around the Jokhang 大昭寺, which the survey ranks first in the whole country because faith there is the shape of the day: the circumambulation at dawn, the sweet-tea house 甜茶馆 at noon, and none of it staged. And the hutongs 胡同 around the Bell and Drum Towers 钟鼓楼 in Beijing, the one part of the capital's old city that is both easy for a first-time visitor and still lived in.

Three are known and underrated. Quanzhou 泉州, the old port in Fujian 福建 that the survey calls half incense and half smoke: a temple every few steps and a market between them, a World Heritage 世界遗产 city since 2021 where the listing changed little in the lanes. Kashgar 喀什's old city, the mud-brick quarter with its high houses, alive and Uyghur 维吾尔族, busy and still itself. Shaoxing 绍兴's old streets along the canals, where a Tang-dynasty bridge is still the way to the wet market 菜市场.

Five are barely known outside China. Chaozhou 潮州, which the survey calls the most underrated living museum of southern life, with its morning market, its gongfu tea 工夫茶 and its floating bridge 广济桥. Shaxi 沙溪 in Yunnan 云南, the last surviving market town of the tea-horse road, with a Friday market that the villages still come down to. Lili 黎里, a water town near Suzhou 苏州 in Jiangsu 江苏 with close to ten thousand residents and over a hundred covered lanes and almost no shops, the survey's model of a real water town. Linhai 临海, the old prefecture city of Taizhou with its wall and its Ziyang Street 紫阳街. And Yangmeizhu Lane 杨梅竹斜街 behind Qianmen 前门 in Beijing, restored without evicting anyone, which the survey holds up as the way a street can be renewed.

What the eleven share is density of life, whatever their age or fame, and in most of them the main street is commercial and the lanes are not. The one with the quietest main street is Lili. The one with the loudest is Pingyao. They pass the same test.

04The Walled County Town

Which walled old cities in China still have people living inside?

The commonest living old town in China is a county seat that never lost its wall, and the survey holds a hundred and seventy of them.

Pingyao 平遥 is the model and the exception. Roughly ten thousand people still live inside the wall, down from several times that before the World Heritage 世界遗产 listing, and they stay because the local government pays them to: a subsidy for keeping and repairing an old courtyard house. The result is a town where the merchant banks of the nineteenth century, the county yamen, the temples and the residents' vegetable market are all inside one circuit of wall, entered for nothing, with a single ticket for the sights. It is also the busiest of the walled towns, and the survey's advice is the one it gives everywhere: the south street 南大街 is for the lanterns, the lanes east and west of it are for the town.

The others are quieter and the survey ranks several of them nearly as high. Langzhong 阆中 in Sichuan 四川, with its examination hall and its vinegar works. Jianshui 建水 in Yunnan 云南, whose old city has a Confucian temple the size of a park and a street of purple-clay 紫砂 potters. Shexian 歙县, the old seat of the Huizhou merchants, whose fish-weir street the survey scores as almost entirely residential. Shouxian 寿县 in Anhui, inside the best-preserved Song-dynasty wall in the country, seven kilometres round, where the town within is simply a working county town. Qingzhou 青州 in Shandong 山东, free to enter, with an old Muslim street eight hundred years old and some twenty thousand people still living inside. Zhengding 正定, an hour from Beijing, with real Sui 隋, late 6th to early 7th century and Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century buildings and a free old town full of residents. Yulin 榆林, on the edge of the Ordos 鄂尔多斯 desert, with six gate-towers riding its main street and ninety-odd lanes of residents, which the survey lists as one of the country's least-known walled towns.

Two cautions the cards carry. The old city of Datong 大同, in Shanxi 山西, was rebuilt on a large scale from 2008 and is argued about; the survey keeps it because the Liao and Jin temples are real and people live inside. And Kashgar 喀什's old city, walled in mud rather than brick, is the one on this list where a visitor will feel most foreign, and the survey scores it among the top four in the country for exactly that reason.

How long. A walled town is a full day by the survey's nine-slot model, which the eleventh block gives; the wall at golden hour is the last slot but one, before the night market.

05Water Towns, True and False

Which Chinese water towns are real, and which are tourist towns?

The water town is the Chinese old town a foreigner is most likely to visit and the one the survey is hardest on.

The false kind is easy to describe. The residents have gone, the houses along the canal are shops and guesthouses under one management, the night is a lighting show, and the survey calls it a tourist town rather than a living one. By its test the western half of Wuzhen 乌镇 is the clearest case, and it is not in the core list at all. Zhouzhuang 周庄's main streets and Xitang's bar street 西塘酒吧街 score as emptied, though both towns keep a card because a few residents still appear on the canal at seven in the morning and the outer town is full of people. The survey's honesty here is the point: it does not say these places are bad, it says they are no longer lived in, and it sends the visitor two towns over.

The true kind is quieter and has a wet market 菜市场. Lili 黎里, near Suzhou 苏州 in Jiangsu 江苏, is the survey's model: close to ten thousand residents, more than a hundred covered lanes off the canal, a commerce score of one, and a place in the survey's top eleven. Xinshi 新市, in Deqing, is where the survey sends a visitor at half past five in the morning for the mutton noodles and the rice wine the old men drink with them, and the West River market after. Anchang 安昌, outside Shaoxing 绍兴, hangs its cured meat 腊味 and sausages along the canal for the town's own winter. Nanxun 南浔, Tongli 同里 and Luzhi 甪直 are in the middle: famous, ticketed, with a busy core, and with real lanes and real residents one bridge away, which the survey scores as still worth it. Jinxi 锦溪, Qiandeng 千灯 and Mudu 木渎 near Suzhou, Xinchang 新场, Fengjing 枫泾 and Jinze 金泽 outside Shanghai, and Tangqi 塘栖 and Xixing 西兴 on Hangzhou 杭州's canal fill out the list, most of them known to nobody abroad.

How to tell in five minutes. The survey's test for a water town is the same as for any town, applied to the canal: is there washing on the steps, is the boat carrying vegetables or tourists, is the shop selling to the street or to you. The false water town fails all three by nine in the morning, and the true one passes them all at six.

06Inside the Modern City

Where can you find old-town life inside Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou?

A visitor with three hours in a Chinese metropolis does not need to leave it to find an old town. Over a hundred of the survey's places are neighbourhoods inside the big cities.

They are the least known and the easiest. Nearly all are free, walkable, on the metro, and rated by the survey as very easy or easy for a visitor with no Chinese. What they lack is a name: nobody flies to China for Bugaoli 步高里, but Bugaoli, a 1930s lane compound in the old French Concession, is where Shanghai people still live in old houses, and the survey puts it first for the city. The rule of the second lane applies with full force here, because the famous street is always the wrong one. In Beijing that street is Nanluoguxiang; the hutongs 胡同 around the Bell and Drum Towers 钟鼓楼, the East Fourth 东四 lanes and the Muslim quarter 回坊 of Niujie 牛街 are the ones still lived in. In Xi'an 西安 the Muslim Street 回民街 is the tourist one and Sajinqiao 洒金桥 is the local one. In Chengdu 成都 it is Kuanzhai Alley 宽窄巷子 and Paotongshu Street 泡桐树街. In Fuzhou 福州 it is the front of the Three Lanes 三坊七巷 and the back of them.

The survey gives a half-day street for twenty gateway cities, and the pattern repeats: Guangzhou 广州's Xiguan 西关 and Enning Road 恩宁路 with the morning tea 早茶 and the dried-seafood street; the lanes east of Pingjiang Road 平江路 in Suzhou 苏州, Jiangsu 江苏, at dawn; Nanjing 南京's Old Gate West 老门西, the last undeveloped Ming lanes south of the city; Wuhan 武汉's lane compounds 里份, the city's version of Shanghai's; Qingdao 青岛's courtyard tenements in the old Chinese quarter; Harbin 哈尔滨's Daowai 道外 with its baroque fronts and northern courtyards and its morning market; Hangzhou 杭州's Xiaohe Street 小河直街 on the canal, which the survey calls far more original than Hefang Street; Xiamen 厦门's Eighth Market 八市, the most alive old market in the country by its count; Kunming 昆明's Wenming Street 文明街 with the flower-and-bird market.

The three-hour formula. Breakfast where the neighbours eat, forty minutes. A wet market 菜市场 or morning market, forty. The two or three lanes behind the main street, an hour. One old shop, one craft or one neighbourhood temple, half an hour. Something from a stall to take away. The survey wrote it for a visitor between a landing and a hotel, and this site uses it as the first product a visitor buys.

07Merchant Towns and Ports

Which Chinese merchant and river towns still work at their old trades?

The towns the survey rates most alive are often the ones that made or moved something, and still do.

The craft towns are the clearest case, because the trade is the life. Shenhou 神垕, in Henan 河南, is the only town in China where the Jun-ware 钧瓷 kilns never went out; the lanes are paved with shards and the potters are at the wheel. Chenlu 陈炉, on the loess above Tongchuan, has fired Yaozhou ware 耀州瓷 for fourteen centuries, and its walls are built of stacked jars. Yincheng 荫城 in Shanxi 山西 was the iron town of the north for two thousand years and has five families of smiths left, still making hoes and sickles with almost no tourism at all. Jianshui 建水's purple-clay 紫砂 street, Jingdezhen 景德镇's old kiln lanes, and Tongren 同仁's Regong 热贡 quarter, where by the survey's count tens of thousands of people paint thangkas for a living, are the same story in clay and paint. A visitor who wants to watch something being made rather than sold goes to these, and this site's page on things made by hand takes it from there.

The river ports are the second family, and they are the most photographed places in the survey. Qikou 碛口, on the Yellow River in Shanxi, was the port where boats met camel trains, and its cave houses climb the bank with the villagers still in them; the survey calls it Pingyao 平遥 without the crowds. Hekou 河口 in Jiangxi 江西 was the first town on the tea road to Russia and keeps seven hundred Ming and Qing buildings and a pontoon bridge where women still beat their washing. Gongtan 龚滩 hangs its stilt houses over a gorge of the Wu River; Heijing 黑井 in Yunnan 云南 made salt for twelve centuries and produced thirteen scholars. Shedian 赊店 and Jingziguan 荆紫关 on the Henan-Hubei border, Yaowan 窑湾 on the Grand Canal 大运河, Hexia 河下 at Huai'an 淮安, Zhoucun 周村's old commercial street in Shandong 山东 where the old-name shops are the original ones: the list runs to over sixty towns whose reason for being was a road, a river or a market, and whose life did not stop when the trade did.

Two things make these the best-value towns on the page. They are almost all free, and they are almost all unknown in English; the survey marks most of them as Very Low on its foreign awareness scale and puts several on its hidden-thirty list. The cost is distance: a few are a long drive from anywhere, and the cards say which.

08Living Ethnic Quarters

Which minority quarters in China are still lived in, and how should a visitor behave?

Fifty-odd of the survey's places are minority quarters where people still live, and the survey draws a hard line between those and the villages built to perform.

The line is residence. A living quarter has houses with families in them, a market, a place of worship in daily use, and a trade; a performance village has a stage, a ticket and costumes on a timetable. The survey keeps the first and sends the second to its register of tourist towns, and this site's page on shows covers what happens on the stage. The ethics the survey attaches, which this site adopts, are three: do not stage a photograph, do not disturb worship, and ask before you photograph a person.

The west has the great ones. The Barkhor 八廓街 in Lhasa 拉萨 is the survey's highest-scoring place in China: a circuit of lanes around the Jokhang 大昭寺 walked clockwise from before dawn, with the sweet- tea houses full by mid-morning. Kashgar 喀什's old city, Kuqa 库车's old town where four fifths of the residents are the original families and each lane has a trade, Hotan 和田's walled quarter, the blue lanes of Kazanqi 喀赞其 in Yining 伊宁, all Uyghur 维吾尔族 and all inhabited. Linxia 临夏's eight quarters and thirteen lanes in Gansu 甘肃, where five thousand Hui 回族 households refused to move and the mosques and lanes are as they were. Wuzhong 吴忠 in Ningxia 宁夏, where the survey counts close to eight hundred morning-tea houses and a Hui grandfather sits two hours over a pot of eight-treasure tea 八宝茶. Beijing's own Niujie 牛街, the capital's densest Hui neighbourhood, with its mosque, its halal market and its queues.

The south has the villages. Zhaoxing 肇兴 in Guizhou 贵州, the largest Dong 侗族 village in China, with five drum towers 鼓楼 and five wind-and-rain bridges, where the grand chorus 侗族大歌 is still sung by the villagers and the indigo cloth still dries on the rails. Chengyang 程阳's eight villages nearby. Taoping 桃坪羌寨, the two-thousand-year-old Qiang 羌族 fortress village in Sichuan 四川 with its watchtowers and water channels under the houses, still lived in. Xizhou 喜洲 on the Dali 大理 plain, the Bai 白族 town of courtyards and tie-dye 扎染, and Weishan 巍山 south of it, ninety per cent original residents by the survey's count. Xijiang 西江千户苗寨, the thousand-household Miao 苗族 village, which the survey keeps with a warning: the viewing terrace and the old street are all guesthouses, the six thousand people live further up the hill.

How to visit one. Market day if there is one: Shaxi 沙溪's Friday, Kashgar's Sunday livestock market. Early, for the same reason as everywhere else on this page. And with the leisure page open, because the difference between watching a Dong chorus and being pulled into a circle dance 锅庄 is the difference between this page and that one.

09Loved at Home, Unknown Abroad

Which Chinese old towns do foreigners never hear about?

Almost nine in ten of the places on this page have little or no English information, and the survey set out to find the hundred among them that Chinese travellers love most.

The measure is a gap. On one axis the survey scores how much a place means at home: its life, its heritage, its food, its standing in Chinese travel. On the other it scores how much the English internet knows: guidebooks, forums, maps, reviews. A hundred and four places score high on the first and near zero on the second, and the survey calls them the sweet spot; it then picked thirty, five from each region, as the ones to develop first.

The thirty read like a map of a China foreigners have not visited. Lili 黎里 and Shaxi 沙溪, both in the top eleven. Qikou 碛口 on the Yellow River. Changting 长汀, the Hakka 客家 capital in Fujian 福建 with thousands of traditional buildings and a street where the blacksmith and the tofu maker still trade. Qingzhou 青州 and Shenhou 神垕 and Yincheng 荫城, from the blocks above. Shouxian 寿县 inside its Song wall, and Bozhou 亳州's north quarter, the herbal-medicine capital with tens of thousands of households unmoved. Xinshi 新市's dawn noodles. Yulin 榆林's six gate-towers. Linxia 临夏, Kuqa 库车, Wuzhong 吴忠 and Tongren 同仁 from the west. Hekou 河口, Qianyang 黔阳, Hongjiang 洪江 and Liukeng 流坑 in the middle of the country, the last a single-clan village of seven thousand with over two hundred Ming and Qing houses still lived in. Yangloudong 羊楼洞, where the tea road began and the granite paving keeps four centuries of wheelbarrow ruts. Songkou 松口, the port the Hakka left for Southeast Asia from; Chikan 赤坎 in Zhanjiang with its French-era arcades; Puqian 铺前 in Hainan 海南 with the country's only S-shaped arcade street; Danzhou 儋州, an island town in Guangxi 广西 with no road bridge because the villagers refused one. Weishan 巍山, Gongtan 龚滩, Huili 会理, Heijing 黑井, Taoping 桃坪羌寨 and Zhaoxing 肇兴 in the southwest.

Why the gap exists is worth saying. These towns have no English name that a search engine recognises, no foreign-language signage, and no reason to have either: nobody came. The survey's rule for this site is to say so rather than pad it out, and to treat "no English information" as the reason to go rather than the reason not to.

What they are not. They are not remote for the sake of it: Qingzhou is an hour from Qingdao 青岛, Zhengding 正定 an hour from Beijing, Xinshi under an hour from Hangzhou 杭州. They are simply off the list, and this page is the list.

10The Famous Ones, Honestly

Is Wuzhen real? Is Hongcun? Which famous old towns are tourist towns?

Several of the best-known old towns in China are on this page with a warning label, and seventy more are not on it at all.

The warning label is the survey's fourth box: high commerce, low life. Hongcun 宏村 in Anhui, the most painted village in China, receives several million visitors a year by the survey's count and has moved most of its villagers out to service them; the buildings are real and the survey keeps it for them. Xitang's bar street 西塘酒吧街, Zhouzhuang 周庄's core, Tunxi 屯溪's old street in Huangshan 黄山, Changsha 长沙's Taiping Street 太平街, Guangzhou 广州's Shangxiajiu 上下九, Chengdu 成都's Huanglongxi 黄龙溪, Shanghai's Qibao 七宝, Gulangyu 鼓浪屿 in Xiamen 厦门: all kept, all marked. The survey's phrase is that they are not places not to go; they are places not to be sold as living. A visitor who wants the architecture of Hongcun or the colonial history of Gulangyu should go and should know what they are buying.

The seventy-two outside the list are a different thing: they were built, or rebuilt, for the visitor. Wuzhen 乌镇's western half, cleared of residents and run as one estate. The Song theme park in Hangzhou 杭州 and the Tang-themed resort at Wuxi 无锡, built in the 1990s and 2010s on nothing older. Luoyi 洛邑古城 in Luoyang 洛阳, opened in 2017; Taierzhuang 台儿庄, rebuilt on a battlefield in 2008; Luanzhou 滦州古城, Huangling 篁岭 with its staged autumn drying, the film-set towns, the "ethnic villages", the Xi'an 西安 Tang street 大唐不夜城 and the Urumqi 乌鲁木齐 bazaar building. This site's pages on shows and on shopping cover several of these for what they are, a stage or a market; this page does not, because nobody lives in them.

How to use the register. The survey's own suggestion, which this site takes up as a product, is the comparison walk: Lili 黎里 against Wuzhen, Pingyao 平遥 against a rebuilt street, the back of Ciqikou 磁器口 against its front. An hour in each is the fastest lesson in the difference between an old town and a set.

And one correction to the guidebooks. The most famous old town in a foreigner's China is often the emptiest. The survey's top eleven contains no water town a foreigner has heard of, and its emptied list contains most of the ones they have.

11Three Hours, a Day, Two Days

How long should you spend in a Chinese old town, and how do you plan it?

The survey wrote its towns up as products, and the shapes it gives are the ones this site sells.

Three hours is the city neighbourhood between a landing and a hotel: breakfast with the neighbours, the wet market 菜市场, the lanes behind the main street, one old shop or temple, and something from a stall. The survey gives the walk for eight gateway cities; Beijing's runs from the Drum Tower through the lanes behind Yandai Xiejie 烟袋斜街 to the snack street at Huguosi 护国寺, Xi'an 西安's from the Sajinqiao 洒金桥 breakfast stalls to the Drum Tower, Lhasa 拉萨's once round the Barkhor 八廓街 and into a sweet-tea house 甜茶馆.

Half a day is the first-timer's version, with a guide, no tickets, and a task card for a visitor with no Chinese: find three vegetables you have never seen, have your photograph taken with a craftsman. The survey's shortlist is the Bell and Drum Tower 钟鼓楼 hutongs 胡同, Xi'an's Muslim quarter 回坊, Guangzhou 广州's Xiguan 西关, the lanes off Pingjiang Road 平江路, Chengdu 成都's Shaocheng 少城, the back of Fuzhou 福州's Three Lanes 三坊七巷, and Shanghai's Bugaoli 步高里.

A day is a walled town, in nine slots from seven in the morning: breakfast in the lane, the market, the lanes proper, an old shop or craft, lunch where the residents eat, a teahouse or a temple, the second quarter of the town, the golden-hour walk on the wall or the river, the night market, and the lit main street or a local opera to finish. The survey wrote out three: Pingyao 平遥, with the vinegar works and the lacquer 漆器 workshop in the afternoon and the wall at half past five; Quanzhou 泉州, from rice-noodle paste at seven through the West Street 西街 market, the twin pagodas, the incense shops on Zhongshan Road 中山路, the mosque, the flower-crowned fishing village at Xunpu 蟳埔, and a nanyin 南音 teahouse at eight; Chaozhou 潮州, from the West Horse Road 西马路 market through the lanes behind the arches, the potters, a gongfu-tea lesson, the floating bridge 广济桥, and the night-market rice noodles.

Two days is a base with something around it, and the survey names eight: Shaxi 沙溪 with the Shibao Mountain 石宝山 song fair and the Bai 白族 villages; Jianshui 建水 with the Tuanshan 团山 houses and the narrow-gauge train; Langzhong 阆中 with the shadow puppets; Shaoxing 绍兴 with Anchang 安昌 and the rice-wine town; Shexian 歙县 with Chengkan 呈坎 and the ink and inkstone workshops; Zhenyuan 镇远 with the Dong 侗族 villages; Xizhou 喜洲 with the tie-dye 扎染 of Zhoucheng; Kashgar 喀什 with the Sunday livestock market.

And the long ones. Five themed routes, north to south and west to east, and a fourteen-day first visit that pairs a monument with a living quarter in every city: the Forbidden City 故宫 with the hutongs, the Terracotta Army 兵马俑 with the Muslim quarter, the pandas with a Chengdu teahouse, Erhai 洱海 with Xizhou, and out through Quanzhou, Chaozhou and Guangzhou's West Gate 西关. Every day of it is on a card, and the cards say how long the train is.

12PreeChina, and What It Is Not

What does PreeChina arrange in China's old towns?

• Most of this page can be walked alone. What we add is the lane you would not find, and the towns nobody has written up in English.
• The three-hour walk, in any gateway city, from the hotel door, with someone who knows which lane and which stall.
• The half day for a first visit, with the task card and the craftsman.
• The full day in a walled town, on the nine slots, with the vinegar works or the potter booked and the teahouse arranged rather than found.
• Hidden China. The sweet-spot towns of the ninth block, in small groups, with the honesty the survey asks for: no English on the ground, and that is the point.
• The comparison walk. Lili 黎里 in the morning and Wuzhen 乌镇 in the afternoon, or the back of Ciqikou 磁器口 against its front, for anyone who wants to see the difference with their own eyes.
• The minority quarters, with the three rules, and with a local host, because a market day in Kashgar 喀什 or a drum-tower evening in Zhaoxing 肇兴 is not something to walk into cold.
• What this page is not.
• Not the theme parks. The seventy-two built or emptied places are on the register and on the pages for shows and shopping where they belong; this page lists them only to say so.
• Not the monument route. The Forbidden City 故宫, the Great Wall 长城 and the Terracotta Army 兵马俑 are on their own pages; this page is the afternoon after them.
• Not the market or the park. Where a lane has a morning market, the markets page has its hours; where an old town is inside a scenic area 景区 with a gate, the parks page has the ticket. This page only says whether anyone lives there.
• Not a village on a stage. The performance villages are on the page for shows.
• Not a promise of English. Nine in ten of these places have none, and the cards say so.