Pingyao

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This was our stopover between Xi'an and Beijing, a small town remarkable for its preservation, particularly an intact wall. We arrived on the sleeper well after dark and caught an auto rickshaw into town. Most of the lights had been shut down and it was eerie traveling down narrow alleyways and through the massive gates as they loomed out of the darkness. We spent the first night at the Lonely Planet's favourite - which was nice enough but quite expensive. The next day we found a better, cheaper place - I must post the name of here. I love the architecture; flagstone and grey brick, carved wooden beams and poles, the flamboyant tiled roofs, patterned windows - it was great just to stand in a courtyard and look about.

The wall is quite impressive. From the top, I squinted at the surrounding industry and tried to imagine a crossbow in my hand and formations of attacking soldiers with banners arrayed below! Small towers punctuate the wall at regular intervals giving it a clean appearance except or the south wall which is inexplicably winding. It's possible to walk around the whole inner town on the wall and gives you a good vantage point from which to watch locals below or gaze as far as you can into the coal-smog haze. Sort of a dusty town with few trees, but it has these great historical relics and is only now undergoing massive restoration - the sewers and streets have been recently redone, and are just being finished up. There's evidence of massive construction all throughout China, but anything that can lure a tourist seems to get extra attention. The tourist plague was transforming the shops into gaudy knicknack shops but not to the extent that we'd seen in Lijiang; so far anyway.

One day we rented a bicycle and headed out of town to a nearby Taoist temple of interest, also saw a couple of temples in town. Really fantastic old statues inside (no pictures) including one quite graphic depiction of hell. The complexes can be quite large, and can start to seem the same.

Pingyao was also a famous ancient center of banking claiming the invention of the cheque. A few are preserved and configured as museums set up as they would have been in their day.

All in all, a nice place to stop with lots to see. Next stop, Beijing.

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