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Pingyao is a commercial and touristic place. Not much of real China today.<span><span> Is a city behind the walls, like in the old times. Very pretty, very crowed. <span>It has performers paying by the State or the City to do public shows all around.
We arrived to the hostel, Jean, Florian, and I, and took a cozy breakfast. I ordered the Israeli options because it seems that it had not meet. Well, it is an egg under a pomodoro sauce full of spice things that I do not recommend.
Florian is the son of Jean, in his 30 traveling the first time with<span> his father in the middle of his 50. They get alone well, and make a funny duo.<span> Florian is the one that wants to try local things and mingle with local people. He had for lunch a plastic bag of noodles in a watery spicy taste from a small street car. He pays 10Y and she is still healthy and with energy to ride for 2 hours a bike! He has long hair and some people stop him to see if their dreads are real.
Jean is the one that please me when I say, I believe is time to stop for a beer.<span> Specially after searching for hours the Sun Tzu lines of the Art of War on the wall as it says in my guide and never find them. Sniff..
We walk around the city, and I could not stopped buying an old tea pot, I do not have even a home now, but I thought it will look so good in Mariana´s Mexican apartment…It was a tuft bargain. But we arrive to a deal.<span> China is affordable and a non-expensive way to travel but is not a cheap place as I expected. <span> If you want to visit places, pay entrance fees, eat a more or less western food,<span> etc. You spend money.
During the afternoon we join a Netherlance guy to the team.<span> He is a MA student of pshyco-human-movements or something like that. He is interested in doing research to get understanding why and how we move our body to grab an apple or a ball. He likes research, but now, there is not much work in Europe he said, so why not China then….He is traveling alone, coming from Moscu. He has done the Mongolian train and he is still in shock with that experience, because he came back to this many time during our journey.<span> He will continue to Nepal and India after covering the south of China.
We rented bikes to go to a Buddhist temple out of the wall city.<span> It took us forever, following a dirty, polluted, road full of big commercial trucks. My bike was a ladies bike, but the sits felt uncomfortable and it had some suspension of something that avoid bumps but made me feel I was jumping all the time. Not to say the break did not work well and I needed to stop using my feet on the floor. <span> The rule of surviving in China Jean said is, you have just to look for yourself, keep riding, and finding your path no matter what, you have always priority, do not stop for anybody… sad, but seems to work.
We have been in that road for a while and we thought we were lost or have taken the lost way, but finally after checking the map several times the sign of the Temple was in front of us.<span> We pay 1Y each to park our bikes and 25Y as the entrance fee to find god behind the door.
This place was empty, is an interesting old temple but very dirty and not well conserved. There is a big tree where people make wishes and leaves a red ribbon on their leaves and branches.<span> I wish I had one of those ribbons… The tree looked like a charismas tree from the distance but once you get closed you were able to read (is a saying in this case for me…) sentences of prays in Chinese.<span> In the interior of the temples there are status of gods and their protectors that are pretty scary.<span> If they were supposed to calm you and inspire you, I felt that if I saw this as a child I would have been able to sleep for a while.<span> Imagine at that time, there were not, mom-mom please leave me the light of the bathroom on, I am scare...nothing, when the candle went off you were supposed to go to sleep not matter what!
I still have this thought when the Netherlander guy wanted to share a melon with us in the middle of the road. <span> It was getting dark, I really wanted to come back. I vote for not eating the melon next to the peasant that where still working on the fields.<span> The French guys supported me because they wanted to arrive on time to the big supermarket of the town to buy shoes for Florian. <span> The Netherlander put back the melon on his tinny backpacker disappointed.
I bought the train to Xian…! I did not find a sleeper at 9 pm so I will take the 00:30 train. ( around 9 hours this time, I will get to Xian at 9 am). I had everything I need it written in a paper by the nice son of the Harmony Guesthouse owner. But after a long line and passing my paper to the teller she say, not sleeper, no sleeper, hard sit, hard sit, I wanted to find something early in a train at 4 pm, 5 pm, 6 pm, 7 pm.. etc. But impossible to get me understood she gave me the 00:30 midnight train<span>L I have to be happy, sometimes there are not sleepers places <span> at any time.
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