"I am old and ugly - why do you want a picture of me?" asks the grizzled village elder, shaking his weather-worn head in bemusement.

Dressed in simple village attire - loose cotton pants and 1950s Mao jacket - and clutching a silver angel- hair tobacco pipe matching his wispy grey beard, this handsome octogenarian in many ways typifies 's humble beauty.

I am in Baisha, a small town in the country's remote southwest province of where, in stark contrast to much of rapidly modernizing China, the ageless reign. Here, old is good, old is beautiful, old is something to be treasured.

Baisha constitutes part of the famous three- town cluster of , the historic well- preserved prefecture that sits beneath the lofty Jade Dragon Snow mountains, not far from the mythical . Within easy reach of the fabled Shangri La region, immortalized in James Hilton's 1933 novel The Lost Horizon, Lijiang is said to be a town left behind by fairies, born a millennia ago when the nomadic Naxi (pronounced Nashi) minority people crossed over from the Tibetan plateau, trading in their long-distance yak caravans for a pastoral lifestyle on the surrounding fertile valley.

Today, Baisha remains a Naxi stronghold, a place virtually unchanged since the 11th century. With my guide Gou, we explore its dusty streets, catching a rare glimpse of primitive rural China; chickens scratch in the dirt, mahjong tiles clack, women in doorways wash their hair from wooden buckets.

The town's time-locked culture makes it a living museum enjoyed by a growing number of domestic and overseas tourists, many fascinated by the Naxi's unique lifestyle. Almost half of China's 60 recognized ethnic minority groups reside in Yunnan province, each with their own colorful history and tradition. The Naxi are no different.

Until recently, this 250,000-strong nationality remained one of the world's last free and open matriarchal societies whereby women controlled family affairs, organized market activity and indulged in taking multiple lovers, an ancient ritual known as the zouhun, or 'walking marriage' system. Gou says despite the recent outlawing of such customs, largely due to the Chinese government's crackdown on adultery and polyandry, Naxi women remain respected and independent.

Resplendent in traditional dress, trousers, aprons and caps in various shades of blue, Naxi women also wear criss-cross strapped goat skin capes embroidered with seven circular patches said to symbolize the stars of the Big Dipper constellation under which they toil. Not surprisingly, Naxi women constitute the bulk of the workforce.

Naxi men, on the other hand, are left to drink, paint and ponder their place in life, and some male elders are renown calligraphers and musicians, performing regularly in various classical orchestras throughout the Lijiang area. Remnants of an earlier era, these unabridged musical collectives were originally founded in the 1200's under Kublai Khan's patronage and remain famous for their "three olds"; old men (few players are under 80 years of age), old instruments and old songs.

Banned during the Cultural Revolution, many musicians concealed their instruments by burying them underground. These days, aided by public donations, Baisha's local orchestra conducts daily roadside performances, its poker-faced, silk-robed members re-creating with solemn simplicity folk-based compositions from the Song Dynasty that marry ancient Torch music with Confucian ceremony.

Also held in high esteem in this part of the world is Dr. Shixiu Ho, Baisha's spritely 82-year-old Naxi herbalist and Tao physician who’s Lijiang Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Chinese Herbal Medicine Clinic has gained significant notoriety in the region since it opened in 1985. The diminutive Dr. Ho, a spectacle of herbal wisdom in his white laboratory coat and fu beard, counts himself as a natural healer and acupuncturist, having purportedly treated more than 300,000 patients world-wide suffering such ailments as diabetes, cancer, bronchitis using wild herbs and roots collected from the nearby hills.

"To treat a disease is like fighting fire," he is quoted in one of the many newspaper articles written on him.

Ironically, it was his own potentially fatal illness in his 20s that led Dr. Ho to return to Jade Dragon Snow Mountains to investigate medicinal herbs. After a decade of study, including his father's secret botanical recipes, he eventually cured himself, earning his doctor's stripes along the way. An unashamed self- promoter, Dr. Ho claims he was "discovered" in the mid 1980s by the English travel writer Bruce Chatwin who wrote of him in the New York Times following one of the author's forays through China.

"He died in 1989," he laments, pouring me a bitter herbal concoction. "I was very sad."

The multi-lingual Dr Ho has since become an international celebrity of sorts, hosting diplomats, dignitaries, surgeons and television personalities, including self-styled nomad Michael Palin and comedian John Cleese, the latter offering the parting quip: "Nice bloke, crap tea!"

Nearby is the Yu Feng Si (Jade Peak) Buddhist monastery, home to the Tibetan Red Hat sect and a 500- year-old sacred camellia tree believed to bloom 10,000 pink flowers each spring. Piling out of our mini- bus, we climb the carved stone steps to view this 5.6 metre high Ming-era relic. On closer inspection, the camellia is actually an outgrowth of two entangled trees - resembling one male, one female - planted too close together. During the 1950s, a resident Buddhist monk Nong Lu risked death at the hands of Mao's Red Guards by secretly watering the tree at night. Now nearing his 90th birthday, this faithful guardian still sits in blissful solitude on a nearby porch, watching over his beloved camellia.

Ten kilometers further south is Lijiang's main town and star tourist attraction, Dayan. This picture-book quarter is one of China's most popular sites, boasting the country's largest collection of free- standing, antiquated wood and stone houses. Built in the 13th century, the charming design of these ornate structures is a poignant reminder of Lijiang's centuries-old continuous history.

A majority of these dwellings, with their upturned eaves and potted flower-lined terraces, survived a devastating earthquake in 1996 that destroyed adjacent Lijiang's modern concrete buildings, killing 300 people. That the old quarter withstood the powerful quake is testament to time-honored Naxi construction methods, where erected wood-pole frames allowed mud-brick walls to collapse outwards leaving both tiled roof tops and village inhabitants largely untouched.

A year later in 1997, amidst a flurry of restoration work, UNESCO listed Lijiang as a World Heritage Cultural site, signalling a new co-existence between tradition and tourism. Today, the town is Yunnan's contribution to the growing acceptance by the central Chinese government that rampant development is not always welcome. Indeed, bus-loads of Chinese tour groups now flock to pedestrianised Dayan in great numbers to experience firsthand a rapidly vanishing culture - old world China and all its inherent charms.

One of the town's prettiest features is its twisting network of spring water canals. Fed by the snow- capped Jade Dragon mountains and collected in the nearby - rumored to harbor a mythical dragon among its deep waters and phoenix pavilions - these swiftly-flowing streams are the lifeblood of Lijiang ('beautiful river'), giving rise to the town's reputation as the Oriental Venice.

The Naxi have cleverly diverted streams through their homes and kitchens, creating small artesian wells the Chinese call canyi. At the southern end of town the Baima Long Tan Triple Well divides water pools according to usage; the upstream well is strictly for drinking only, the second well for washing fruit and vegetables and the third for washing clothes.

In the dull half-light of early morning, we follow Dayan's labyrinth of canals, strolling past countless chestnut wood gangplanks that link houses to the myriad stone alleys paved smooth by years of foot traffic. The scene is China in rewind: store holders sleepily remove carved door panels, tai chi- slippered street masseurs limber up, shuffling old Naxi folk hawk fresh vegetables from rusted three-wheel carts and pork buns and jidou liangfen (bean curd jelly) from open windows.

Flanked by weeping willows and red lanterns, and spanned by stone-arch bridges, Dayan's canals are often wider than the narrow walkways that run beside them, suggesting that it is water and not the road that ultimately guides the way. Most of Dayan's backstreets invariably lead to bustling Sifang street, actually a market square, the town's nerve center and once part of a vital tea-horse trading route through to Tibet. Now highly commercialized, the square is ringed by cafes, guest houses and souvenir shops peddling handicrafts, Mao memorabilia and the ubiquitous postcard set, all part of China's great leap towards modern capitalist success.

Still, the square remains an important meeting place for many of the town's 40,000 residents and mid- morning elderly Naxi women gather in full costume to sing and line dance in a fabulous ritual that often sweeps up unsuspecting tourists. Forming a long circle chain, they hold hands and stamp their feet in a traditional method called alili designed to keep toes and fingers warm during the cold winter months. This dance is believed to bring to life cultural traditions involving family, love and solidarity.

Unlike the neighboring cobbled town of Dali to the south, Lijiang was originally built for trade, not political purposes, hence its free-form and unfortified architectural layout, quite an exception in wall- obsessed China. With houses cozily integrated together and sharing a single courtyard, the town's pervading focus is one of unity and harmony where Naxi, Tibetan, Han and Bai people have peacefully co-existed for centuries.

Olden as it is, Lijiang and its hidden beauty are hopefully here to stay.

Inspired by the sojourns of PJ O'Rourke and Paul Theroux, Melbourne, Australia-based journalism graduate and freelance writer Steve Tauschke has previously survived travel encounters with Hong Kong hurricanes, betel-chewing Burmese transgenders and killer quakes in Taiwan. Specializing in Asian locations, Steve hopes to one day unravel the mystery of cuisine