Global village

Cuandixia is a two-hour drive and a couple of centuries away from Beijing.

The Ming Dynasty-era (1368-1644) town is nestled in Beijing's mountain ranges, a tiny, semicircular clutch of stone houses and narrow, crooked streets. It looks like a film set, the location for a historical drama or a fairy tale. But it is, in fact, a living town with a 400-year history.

It's bucolic charms have resulted in Cuandixia becoming something of a tourist destination, with day-trippers from Beijing arriving in droves to walk its cobbled streets, hike the surrounding mountains and, if they are so inclined, spend the night at one of the cute stone houses of the villages' residents, who open their homes to travelers.