The 1930s lanes still standing, the family teahouse off the renovated street, the inn run by a calligrapher's daughter.
Behind Qingdao's beer street lies an old town built from the liyuan — European facades wrapped around Chinese courtyards, still lived in, still pouring tea. CN: 青岛里院：啤酒街背后的老城院子
In a Zhejiang county with no train station, a kilometre-long lane still sells herbs, tin, and tea by the glass — and the villages above it are close enough to reach by afternoon. CN: 松阳南直街：仍在营业的老街与茶馆
An hour from Chengdu, a city that drilled the world's first thousand-metre well still stands its wooden derricks over noodle shops — and still boils salt in a shed you can walk into. CN: 自贡：天车还在，盐还在熬
Five streets of shophouses built with money sent home from Southeast Asia, still shading the same plastic stools and the same slow pots of tea. CN: 海口骑楼下的老爸茶
Tin money from the Gejiu mines built the courtyard houses at Tuanshan, west of Jianshui. A century on, the carving is still there and so are the families. CN: 团山：锡矿钱盖的村子，至今有人住
A river-wrapped grid of Ming and Qing lanes in northeast Sichuan, where family courtyard inns, bran vinegar, and an intact examination hall have outlasted the crowds that never quite arrive. CN: 阆中：醋香比游客更久的老城
An arcade quarter on the West River that was built to be flooded, and still is — with the family teahouses, tin-miner's tea, and frothed soy milk the tour buses never reach. CN: 梧州骑楼城，柱上系船的铁环仍在
In Tianjin's former concession, two thousand garden villas from the 1920s and '30s still stand — and most are still lived in. Skip the plaza; walk the quiet avenues. CN: 五大道：马车绕不进的居住街区
One lane off Paifang Street, the arcade shops give way to courtyard houses and the sound is not footsteps but water coming to a boil. A guide to Chaozhou's family teahouses, gongfu tea, and the old town the day-trippers miss. CN: 牌坊街背后的潮州：还在冲工夫茶的老巷
West Street was repaved and its shopfronts repainted. Step into the lanes off it and the twentieth century, along with the renovation budget, simply stops. CN: 泉州的小巷：西街修好了，巷子没动
Four kilometres south of Tengchong's hot springs, a town of volcanic-stone lanes and courtyard houses raised by caravan traders who valued a village library over a fourth wing on the house. CN: 和顺：石板巷与侨乡的书香
In a red-earth garrison town in southern Yunnan, more than a hundred old wells still work as plumbing — and by mid-morning the sweet water has become grilled tofu, counted out in corn. CN: 建水的古井，和井边烤豆腐的人家
The tour buses stop at Lu Xun's birthplace and leave by dinner. A few bridges east, the wine is still warmed by the bowl in lanes with no menus and no ticket booths. CN: 绍兴：酒坛多过游客的后巷水道