Restaurants in Xilai offer visitors authentic Sichuan food.[Photo by Chen Liang/China Daily]

Yuantong

Compared with Xilai, Yuantong Old Town is even less developed and hence offers visitors a more authentic feel of an old town on the Chuanxi Plain.

About 40 km away from Chengdu, the town in Chongzhou county has a history of more than 1,600 years. As a goods distribution center along the Wenjing River, it was known as "little Chengdu" in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Rich traders built their shops, warehouses and homes along the river, and left behind quite a few old mansions of traditional Sichuan style in the town.

These mansions are usually complexes of two or three compounds with two-storey buildings around a courtyard on three or four sides. All of the buildings have black-tiled roofs, wooden structures, white-washed walls, flying eaves and towering gables.

As tourism is just being promoted, many of the mansions are still occupied by the township's major institutions. The Huang family's ancestral hall houses the township's taxation office, for example. The Chen family mansion is a local hospital.

The Huang family mansion was ccupied by the local government, but is now open to the public. The house covers anarea of 1,000 meters with several courtyards and a garden. It stands side by side with the Luo family mansion. The two houses have been merged into one.

The Luo family mansion once housed the local gongxiaoshe, or supply and marketing cooperative. Now the two connected houses are used by the Gongxiaoshe Restaurant.