Pingyao

---

We got to Pingyao a little ahead of schedule on Saturday morning. We had to take the hard sleeper. The beds are soft but I think they're called that cos it's so hard to get to sleep on them. There are no compartments, just an open carriage with bunks stacked at three levels high. Wasnt too bad, but not quite first class Trans Siberian. The worst thing was the spitting and constant stream of people to the toilet which was near our beds because we were at the end of the carriage.
We were collected from the train station by a tuk-tuk driver from the Yamen Hostel. Getting a pickup at the station makes things so much easier, a habit we've picked up from Felix the French-Canadian. Pingyao is the old merchant and banking capital of China but it went into decline and still very much unchanged for hundreds of years. It's famous for its folk architecture and city walls. We met a crowd from Australia, England and the US here who had arrived the previous day and they gave us some good tips for food and what to see.We walked the walls on Saturday morning and in the afternoon explored 4 or 5 of its many museums and temples. Unfortunately there's very little information in English, a lot of tourists here are Chinese. We spent one night here and that was enough. We had seen the whole city in one day and just relaxed on Sunday before catching the train to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors.

My camera batteries went before I had a chance to upload any more photos, but I'll get them up soon.

---