There's no easy way to reach Shiqian County Town. Quite reasonably, few tourists brave the long-distance bus from Guiyang, and so the town's many delights are little appreciated outside this northeastern corner of Guizhou Province.

Travel has historically been so difficult that even the provincial tourism bureau pays scant attention to the area. Local legend lays the blame on a long-ago regional leader with a shaky grasp of development economics. He allegedly opposed the building of a railway on the grounds that "it would make the price of eggs go up."

Change cannot be far away. A modern highway smoothed my ride into a tidy new main street much like those in small towns all over China. But once off the bus, I quickly discovered another side to Shiqian, because the town's charms are all within a few minutes' walk.

Shiqian lies in a deep valley, strung along both banks of the Longchuan River. Everything of interest, however, is on the east bank, starting at the southern end with Shiqian's most celebrated feature: hot springs. These have been known for hundreds of years and in pre-Revolutionary times were well developed for use by the townsfolk. The springs rise some distance up the mountainside, so in the old days local officials built their bathhouse at the town's highest point in order to get the hottest, cleanest water. Below that was the public men's bath and, right at the bottom, the women's bath, whose water was also used for washing clothes.

None but the oldest residents remember this arrangement. Today the public bathhouse by the riverside is divided into men's and women's sections, while up the hill is a single complex housing private tubs that cost from 20 yuan to 40 yuan an hour. It's tremendously popular with locals—streams of wet-haired bathers accompanied me back into town along the ancient street that runs parallel with the river.

This street is an attraction in itself. Its irregular wooden buildings look run-down by comparison with the new pedestrian shopping area and neat main street, but on market days it fills with peasant traders from the mountain villages and the old shop fronts come to life. It feels like the whole town crams into this narrow space to finger goods, haggle prices and enjoy the outrageous patter of various "snake-oil" salesmen.