After comparing tiny characters from photo captions with those on provincial maps, I found several of the bridges were accessible from the Zhejiang coastal metropolis of Wenzhou. On the grounds that anything ancient in China not already being marketed for tourism was ripe for redevelopment, and that anything for which tourism promotion was planned was in danger of being pulled down and rebuilt, there was perhaps little time to lose. A few days later, I boarded a train heading south.

Even in 2004 Wenzhou was traffic-choked. Branches of McDonald’s jostled those of KFC and were surrounded by outlets selling pirate DVDs of the latest Hollywood release only days after its opening weekend. Most traditional buildings had vanished, to be replaced by gimcrack shoddiness in white tile and blue glass. Save for the remnants of treaty-port-era foreign consulates on an offshore island, this was hardly the place to be hunting for history.

The city seemed barely aware of the surrounding countryside although its history museum had a display of suoyi, the stiff wet-weather wear woven by farmers from the stringy bark of a local tree, now supposedly as a relic of times past.

But times past were still easily seen on the five-hour journey inland by moderately comfortable bus on a road that wound steeply into the mountains of Taishun county. At the end of unpaved side turnings, patient water buffaloes pulled ploughs and lush hillsides had been sculpted into giants’ staircases hatched with lines of brilliant green young rice plants. Wading farmers still sported their handmade raincoats, whose stiff shoulders gave them a bat-like appearance.

Once they had overcome their shock at encountering a Mandarin-speaking foreigner, the surprisingly helpful staff in the bookshop in Taishun town sold me a map showing the location of the 27 langqiao, or corridor bridges, in the county. One of the prettiest of these roofed river crossings was only 8km to the northeast.

A battered minibus heading towards the town of Xianren dropped me at a modern bridge providing a clear view of its parallel Ming-era (1368-1644) predecessor, the Xianjuqiao. Recently repaired, but with much of the bridge’s original timber retained, its tiled roof formed a gentle arc while its lower portion wore slatted skirts to protect the long timbers supporting it as it leapt with extraordinary grace from one intricately assembled stone platform to the other.

The last bus back to Taishun had already left but I was happy to walk back. The road turned from dust to ancient flagstones, columns of woodsmoke rose from distant farmhouses and there was little traffic beyond a duckherd and his charges.

The bridge with the prettiest location was on the way to the hamlet of Zhouling, two hours south of Taishun by minibus. About 6km before the village, steps led up an embankment to meet a cart track that wound round steep-sided hills laced with thread-like waterfalls, and became a long stone staircase, dropping steeply through the rice terraces.

The occasional tethered goat bleated a mournful greeting. Wildflowers were sprinkled at the edges of the paddies and frogs scattered at footsteps. After about 30 minutes, the Santiaoqiao came into view, looking like a long, thin house stretching across a river where three staircase-paths converged. Inside there were benches where farmers could put down their bamboo shoulder poles and rest in the shade. Although plain, the bridge was perhaps Taishun county’s oldest, first erected in the Tang dynasty (618-907).

A ride hitched on a farm vehicle took me to tiny Zhouling, where there was a hostel whose owners proudly conducted me around the town’s ancient Ming dynasty mansions, some of which were home to dozens all with the same family name. The post office was in someone’s front room. Chickens wandered through the bank.

The town’s bridge was along a stone-flagged path that became no more than the lip of flooded paddies, with the iridescent green of freshly sprouted rice and vege­tables. The two-storey Yuwenqiao was house-like, with a wooden superstructure built over a conventional stone arch. A wooden staircase part way across the bridge led to its upper storey, where plaster gods sat serenely behind panes of glass.

It was 30 minutes east from there the next day to Sankui, whose ugliness was relieved by the presence of two larger bridges. The first, the Xuezhaiqiao, was five minutes from the bus station by the two-stroke tricycle taxis the local people onomatopoeically named bengbengche. With deep-red-painted skirts and colourful ceramic fish on its roof, tails up and spouting water to repel fire, it looked startlingly exotic amid the surrounding ramshackle modern drabness. The Liuzhaiqiao was a short ride back, past the bus station, followed by a brief walk down a path lined with ancient houses where toothless old women were ankle-deep in chickens,dragonflies darted around the edge of paddies and ducklings dabbled among the rice. The bridge, hidden behind a substantial three-storey mud building and only seen at the last moment, was the most colourful yet.

Two gabled mansions with curly upturned eaves were connected by a horizontal two-storey section, topped with yellow-bodied, blue-headed dragons with large pointy teeth and tails thrashing the air. Dating back to 1405, it hardly looked as if it had been restored at all.

The Beijianqiao was at the edge of the town of Sixi, 30 minutes northeast of Sankui, at the confluence of two rivers. The high, red-skirted bridge had a separate central roof with sharply pointed upturned eaves, and on its ridge there was a face-off between two lively lime-green dragons. Triple niches midway housed a small Buddha figure, and there was a petition, in angry red characters but respectful language, asking the authorities to halt construction of a dam that would damage the bridge: astonishing given the ruling elite brooked no dissent even then.

The hamlet of Xiaocun was about an hour further northwest. The owners of the Aiguo Guesthouse were friendly, and keen to promote knowledge of Xiaocun’s bridges, one of which, the spectacular Wenxingqiao, they rightly called a wugongqiao, or “centipede bridge”. First there were steep stone steps, then a gradual rise, a levelling out, a swoop to the top, and a steep drop to the stone steps on the other side. As a result, the two-storey centre section, with its turned-up eaves, had a drunken tilt.

Incense was lit to its shrine’s three gods twice each lunar month, said passing supplicants, who stopped to shake out a random stick from a bamboo canister marked shen gong pan ji – “God impartially judges your luck”. The number carved on one flattened end corresponded with the fortune set out in a matching numbered couplet written on the wall.

The bridge was busy on market day, with old ladies going shopping, wiry farmers carrying shoulder poles hung with live ducks, and young women in spangly shoes who carried umbrellas to keep themselves out of the sun. None wanted to be mistaken for a farm girl – not even if she was one.

Not long after my visit, the state-run China Daily, with its characteristic indifference to truth and in a rather colonial tone, described the Beijianqiao as having been “discovered” nearly 900 years after bridges of this type, seen in Song dynasty paintings, were thought to have disappeared.

This would certainly have been news to those crossing it daily, and whose ancestors had used it constantly since the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1661-1722). It wasn’t exactly well-concealed, and as I’d seen, was one of several in the area.

But the people of China’s cities often think of venturing into their own country­side much as Victorian Britons did of exploring “darkest” Africa. All kinds of dangerous things happen there, they say, and you must be wary of the natives.

But, even if not all of the bridges I found are still standing, “darkest” China is, in fact, full of pleasant surprises.