More and more Chinese travelers are striking out for ever more exotic locations to escape the frenetic bustle of their lives.

Many old towns, hidden in China's vast countryside and usually neglected by outsiders, are becoming increasingly popular.

Following this trend, I have been to dozens of old small towns in the past few years. Fubao has been the best so far.

I made a two-day trip to the small town in southeastern Sichuan Province from Chengdu, the provincial capital, together with a friend of mine who has his own car.

The distinctive and elegant traditional residential buildings of the town have appeared in photo albums and travel magazines, but we chose to visit Fubao because no one we knew had actually been there.

Located in Hejiang County in the city of Luzhou and bordering Guizhou Province in southwest China, Fubao is about 400 kilometers southeast of Chengdu.

It did not seem to be such a long way to go on the morning we left Chengdu.

After a drive of only four hours along the straight expressways, we arrived in Luzhou at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. We had already traveled three-quarters of the way.

After lunch, the sky became overcast and it soon rained.

We crossed a bridge spanning the Yangtze River, which was quite muddy as it was the wet season, then we started to climb. The road became narrow and winding.

After another hour's drive, we reached Hejiang, a town nestling on the northern banks of the Yangtze River. There we saw street peddlers with bamboo baskets full of lychees.

It cost us 10 yuan (US$1.20) for a plastic bag of lychees, to give us our first taste of the fruit in the year. They were truly fresh and delicious.

The flat road was behind us soon after we had crossed another bridge over the Yangtze River. We had to toss about on a muddy stone-paved road. The last part of our journey, about 48 kilometers, suddenly became slow.

But the views outside the car windows were getting better.

The rolling mountains were much greener, with forests of fir and pine. Thatched houses were surrounded by green paddy fields and shaded by bamboo groves. Lychee trees had branches weighed down with fruit.

Hundreds of white egrets nestled on top of bamboo groves stretching along a bend of the Pujiang River, a small tributary of the Yangtze.

Upstream of the river, we arrived at Fubao at about 5 o'clock in the evening.

Along the town's main street, we found no traditional houses but tacky cement buildings. A little disappointed, we continued to drive down the street.

At the end of the street was a stone bridge, where we saw old houses in a unique architectural style. Stretching along the top of a gentle slope parallel with the street, they were hidden behind the new buildings.

Leaving our car on a patch of empty ground near the bridge, we explored the old part of Fubao on foot.

It was raining. We walked on a slab stone-paved lane that glimmered while being polished by the rain.

On both sides of the lane were old houses featuring a unique timber structure with black timber columns framing the walls, whitewashed walls, gray-tiled roofs and wide eaves. They demonstrated an architectural style that we had never seen elsewhere in China.

Turning left, we stepped onto the main street of old Fubao, called Huilong (Rolling Dragon) Street.

With an average width of about 3 meters, it is a cobbled lane that rises and falls along the slope.

Standing under the wide eaves of a house in the lower part of the street, we found that the steep stone stairways of the rising street and the layers of eaves formed a perfect backdrop for a photo session.

Most of the shops along the street were closed. We visited a wine shop and found that the family of the elderly man who owned the shop lived in rooms behind the shop itself.

On the side facing the street, the house had only two stories. On the side facing the river valley, the house had two more stories down the slope.

Through the 20-square-metre shop, we saw that the house actually had more than 10 rooms.

Quite a few houses on both sides of Huilong Street had wooden boards hanging on their doors, with names written on them such as "Sanshen Miao (Temple of Three Gods)" and "Tianhou Gong (Temple of the Tianhou Goddess)."

But we found that none of them were still the religious structures that their names indicated. Instead, they are the houses of local people, especially the elderly.

Apart from several children apparently returning home from school, we saw no other visitors or local young people on Huilong Street that afternoon.

The boss of the hotel where we stayed in the new part of Fubao explained to us later that most of Fubao's young people older than school age have found work in South China to support their families. Those who remain usually live and do business in the new part of the town.

"So the old street is mainly occupied by the old," he said. "It is almost half empty."

At an empty teahouse at the end of Huilong Street, we were served by an old deaf eighty-something woman. She handed us two cups with tea leaves inside and pointed with her finger to where we could get boiled water. Raising a finger to indicate the price of 1 yuan (12 US cents) for a cup of tea, she said nothing to us.

Accompanied by the silent woman, we drank tea while silently watching the rain.

The rooms in the hotel where we stayed were quite small and basic. Through the windows, however, we could see over the Pujiang and Dachaohe rivers encircling the town, which was divided clearly into old and new sections, and we could see white egrets skimming the water.

We got up at about 6 o'clock the next morning.

Along a muddy side lane by the main street, we climbed onto a slope covered by terraced paddy fields. Facing the gentle slope on which old Fubao nestles across the Dachaohe River, it provided us with a panorama of the old town.

In the light morning mist, it was extremely tranquil and elegant. Straight roofs and wide eaves rose and fell in layers. Black timber columns created numerous rectangles on white walls. The scene had a special kind of geometric beauty.

As smoke began curling up from kitchen chimneys, we returned to Huilong Street.

The street looked much more lively. Two old men chatted outside, each with a cup of tea in his hand. An old woman sat on a bench to have breakfast under the eaves of her house, while a pet dog and cat played by her feet. An old man sold vegetables in front of his house. Newly picked from the fields, they were really fresh.

The morning stroll finally made me realize why I felt an extraordinary sense of ease and delight in old Fubao. There were no new buildings there to spoil the perfect harmony of the old houses and no noisy visitors dressed in bright new clothes to interrupt the laid-back atmosphere created by the old people - apart from my friend and me.

(China Daily September 8, 2003)