Huanglongxi Ancient Town, 40km south of Chengdu, is a charming riverside village whose half-dozen understated Qing-dynasty streets – all narrow, flagstoned and sided in rickety wooden shops – featured in the martial-arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The village is popular with Chinese visitors, in particular groups of old ladies coming to pray for grandchildren to Guanyin, to whom all the village's temples are dedicated.
Buses leave for the village until early afternoon, from Xinnanmen bus station; return buses, which run until at least 3.30pm, are marked with the characters for "Xinnanmen". From the highway bus stop, it's 500m through the quiet new settlement to the old village gate; take the left-hand lane, which is almost narrow enough to touch either side as you walk down the middle. All businesses are either shops selling irrelevant souvenirs or restaurants displaying grindstones for making one of Huanglongxi's specialities, douhua (soft bean curd). You soon reach the 500-metre-long main street; turn left for two tiny nunneries (one on the left, the other at the end of the street beside a beribboned banyan tree), both containing brightly painted statues of Guanyin, Puxian and Wenshu.
At the opposite end of town, larger Gulong Si has two main halls with similar statuary in a wobbly state of repair. There's an ancient banyan supported by posts carved as dragons; the former governor's court with a dog-headed guillotine for executing criminals; and an unusually three-dimensional, fifty-armed Guanyin statue in the right-hand hall.
Wandering around will fill an hour, after which you'll want lunch; the riverfront restaurants near the nunneries are best, serving douhua, fresh fish and crispy deep-fried prawns. You can also buy bamboo-leaf-wrapped packets of huanglongxi douchi, smoked salted soya beans, then sit munching them under willows at one of the outdoor teahouses.
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