My parents just MOVED here after having visited three times. Of course they moved to Beijing, which is not at all the same as moving to some podunk, but still. They live here now!
The first time they visited was for my wedding back in 2006. They came to Kunming and kind of got a full on experience right off the bat going down to my husband's Yunnanese village for the wedding. As far as villages go, my husband's village is fairly large and we put them up in a little village hotel that had running water and flush toilets (but squatters) but it was still quite a shock. Right before the wedding I took them on an overnight bus down to Jinghong, and while the bus scared them a bit, they loved Jinghong. They really enjoy things that give them what they[\i] consider an "authentic" China experience (although personally I hate that term, along with "real China" because of course it is all real China and authentic, what else could it be?). My parents, my dad especially, is kind of an Orientalist although he'd probably take offense if I said so to his face. They love the quaint little Chinese-y stuff, the temples and the courtyard houses and people wearing traditional clothes. That said, their experience has always been somewhat watered down by the presence of tourist infrastructure in all of the places we've visited aside from my village wedding.
My parents are pretty up to try new things but they need their coffee and they prefer Western food to Chinese. They speak practically no Chinese and they are prone to asking lots of questions, taking lots of pictures, and being very very friendly. They like China but they find crowds and staring and dirtyness hard to deal with. I've found that by sticking to well-traveled places I've been able to satisfy their curiousity without overwhelming them. The village was ok but that was because we had family there. If we'd just rocked up on a random village (which I've done in the past) I doubt they'd have liked it, at least on that first trip. I've taken them to Kunming, to Jinghong, to Chengde, on a (sterile, Chinese package) tour to Inner Mongolia, and we just (as in today) got back from Pingyao. They loved Jinghong and loved Pingyao. I imagine in the future I'll probably take them to Lijiang and Dali when we go back to Kunming to visit family.
As of now my parents still need a lot of handholding. Stil it is funny, because my husband actually commented when we were in Pingyao this week that it was like having 4 kids instead of two. Part of it is that they just don't understand anything that is said, at all. I don't know, I have never had the experience of showing up to China and being totally oblivious to what was being said around me. I came to China after having studied Chinese in college and people who can just show up here and get by amaze me, but my parents definitely rely on us a lot and now that they live here part of the challenge is going to be how to slowly help them establish some independence from us.
All of that is basically to say that I think when taking the parents through China it is a good idea, unless you have intrepid world travelers for parents, to stick to places with at least a bit of tourist infrastructure, at least for the first trip. You can show them some dirty toilets, sure, but you don't want every toilet to be vomit-inducing. They'll want, if they're anything like my folks, a hotel with a Western style toilet, a shower with hot water, a decent bed to sleep in at night. They don't need 5 star and tour groups in the Chinese style are honestly too exhausting for them, but they do want some level of comfort. We did visit some villages and smaller towns and my parents liked seeing each and every one of them, but we always had a larger more comfortable base to go back to.