Savoring a snack in quaint Quanzhou

Further down the road, there was a viewing platform on the rooftop of the Xijie tourist service center that overlooked the street and surrounding blocks.

The old redbrick buildings with their red roof ridges curling up like swallow tails, together with ubiquitous erythrina trees bearing their bright red flowers created a scene quaint as it was vivid.

The street, with its long history that can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907), reminds visitors of the prosperous past of Quanzhou, a city that was the eastern starting point of China's ancient Maritime Silk Road.

Ancient towers, chapels, mosques, temples and other historical religious sites and monuments are scattered throughout Quanzhou, suggesting that people from different ethnic and religious groups peacefully coexisted in the city for centuries.

That's partly because the port city once attracted merchants, seamen and explorers from all over the world, bringing with them a diverse range of cultures and a wide variety of goods.

But what touched me most as I strolled along this historical thoroughfare, was not the time-honored sites themselves, but the strong sense of how daily life once played out here.

Vendors still sold their wares from the side of the street as residents dried their clothes on sun terraces. Children burst into fits of laughter as they blew bubbles as snatches of local nanyin music drifted down from open windows. And after turning from the main street into a narrow lane, I came across an old man sitting on a stone bench under a large banyan tree, reading newspapers of the day.

These scenes made me feel quite nostalgic for the pleasant neighborhood where I grew up.

I found that on the square in the middle of the street two shirtless men teaching onlookers how to perform paixiongwu (a chest-clapping dance)-a traditional folk dance from the Minnan region.

They were just one of the grassroots art troupes that the local government employs to stage cultural shows, such as nanyin music, Liyuan Opera and puppet shows.

"We often offer a variety of cultural performances and workshops during holidays on Xijie," says Shangguan Zhipeng, the local events manager. "The street is the perfect setting for getting tourists closer to Quanzhou's cultural roots."

After my visit, I soon realized that Xijie had much more to offer than delicious local snacks-the city's old quarter is something of a destination in its own right.