The 1930s lanes still standing, the family teahouse off the renovated street, the inn run by a calligrapher's daughter.
Most visitors see Kaifeng's costumed Song park and leave. Stay for the old walls, a carved merchants' hall, and the squat pagoda locals call Po Ta. CN: 清明上河园之外的开封：城墙、会馆与半截繁塔
Behind Shexian's eight-legged stone archway, Doushan Street keeps old Huizhou's sky-well houses, inkstone workshops and a river walk that most day-trippers miss. CN: 八脚牌坊背后：歙县斗山街与徽州老巷
One turn off Chaozhou's rebuilt arch street, a short lane of carved granite porches, painted beams and doorway tea tables is still a place where people live. CN: 潮州甲第巷：牌坊街背后，仍有人家的老巷
Behind Zhongshan Lu, the courtyard blocks of Dabaodao are still home to the families who live in them. Beer comes in plastic bags here, and clams come by the basin. CN: 青岛里院：晾衣绳下的老城
In far-west Fujian, Changting's restored Diantou Street gives way to lived-in Hakka lanes, a wall that climbs a hill, and taro dumplings before ten. CN: 长汀：修缮老街背后，仍有人住的客家巷子
North of West Lake, where a small river meets the Grand Canal, people still live behind a row of timber shopfronts. Arrive by water bus, and come early. CN: 杭州小河直街：仍有人家晾衣的运河老街
Cross Bayiqi Road from Fuzhou's restored lanes and the city keeps going: banyan-shaded Zhuzifang, merchant Shangxiahang, and family teahouses with thermos flasks. CN: 三坊七巷之外的福州：河边老巷与一杯茉莉花茶
North of Lu Xun's crowded street, Shaoxing's canal lanes still work as housing: a Song bridge, a calligrapher's quarter, and courtyard gates left ajar. CN: 绍兴八字桥：鲁迅故里以北的台门巷子
In Linhai, Zhejiang, the old prefectural wall doubles as a flood barrier, and the timber street behind it is cut into blocks by fire walls. CN: 临海紫阳街：为挡江水而筑的府城
In Shantou's Xiaogongyuan quarter, the restored 1930s arcades give way within a few blocks to the lived-in ones. A short walk outward from the pavilion. CN: 汕头小公园：走到修复止步的骑楼老街
Behind Jinan's renovated Furong Street, spring-fed channels run past front doors, residents swim in a former palace pool, and tea is sold by the bowl. CN: 济南曲水亭街：芙蓉街以东的泉水人家
A few steps off Chaozhou's restored Paifang Street, Qing-era courtyard houses keep their porcelain rooflines, and families brew gongfu tea on their front steps. CN: 潮州甲第巷：在家门口泡工夫茶的老巷
Behind the weekend cafés of Dongshankou, a few streets of 1920s and 1930s red-brick villas are still family homes. Go before nine. CN: 广州东山口：赶在咖啡人潮前，走一遍红砖洋楼
Wuhan's riverside half still has rows of early twentieth-century brick lanes where people live. Go early, on foot, with breakfast in hand. CN: 汉口老里分：清晨过早，穿巷而行
A near-complete river loop in northern Sichuan holds one of China's best-kept old towns — where the grey courtyards are still homes, not just gift shops, and the vinegar is something you drink. CN: 阆中：四合院仍有人住的古城
Two kilometres east of Harbin's Russian postcard, Chinese merchants built European façades over courtyards. On the restored blocks it reads as a set; one lane over, it is still an address. CN: 道外中华巴洛克：修缮停下的下一条街
A Ming-dynasty grid in the hills of western Yunnan, birthplace of the Nanzhao kingdom, where baked-tea houses, one-strand noodles and a rebuilt watchtower hold a town most travellers skip on the way to Dali. CN: 巍山：明代格局仍在的滇西小城
Shanghai gets the lane houses in the guidebooks. Wuhan's are called lifen, most are still somebody's address, and the restored one tells you the least about them. CN: 汉口里份：仍住着人的老巷
One block behind Jianghan Road's shopping crowds, Hankou's 1930s lane-house compounds still hang laundry and boil kettles. A walk through the lifen most guidebooks never name. CN: 汉口里份：仍有人住的红砖老巷
In 1940 a small Sichuan river town offered to house a displaced university. The lanes that took the desks are still standing, still pouring tea, still cutting pork thin. CN: 李庄：战时的书桌，未改的巷子
Iron mooring rings in the columns, doorways on the second floor that open onto air. Wuzhou built a shopping street that expects the river to come in. CN: 梧州骑楼城：铁环、水门与六堡茶
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