Idle days - Idle workmen

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We arrived early in Pingyao and were greeted by a hostel pick up rickshaw at the train station. The "Harmony" hostel was inside the city walls, and although it was surrounded by quite picturesque streets it also was full of souvenirs, bars, restaurants, guesthouses and therefore tourists. We were greeted by a blue sky so decided to take a stroll around the walls. Soon it became too hot - the only disadvantage of having a blue sky and we escaped to our air-conditioned gueshouse. Pingyao is a place that you can pretty much see in a day. To do so you can buy a 120 yuan ticket that will allow you entry into most of the "attractions" but to be honest that seemed a little steep to us. We were on a different itinery. The front of the guesthouse turned out to be a great people watching spot and so we stayed there for hours sipping cold drinks and observing the life around us. The best spectacle unfolded in the evening. As the temperatures dropped to human levels the chinese used this time to do road works. Apparently the pavement few houses down had to be replaced and so there were about 17 men accomplishing the assignment. It was so interesting watching them, there was the man who was lifting paving stones, a man who was fitting paving stones, a man who was emptying sacs of soil and moving the just created pile to a different place, a man who was rearranging the paving stones, a man who was randomly picking up work tools and leaving them at a different place, several man stood around watching. Now that is only possible in a land of cheap labour! We have seen this phenomenon also in other places, like restaurants. Every 5 minutes there was a DIFFERENT waitress coming up to us and checking what dishes we are still waiting for. There was no concept whatsoever about who is serving which table. Even when we received all our orders the waitresses were still coming up to us to check if we had everything we ordered. I'm sure there is a better way of doing this but this is the way to keep unemployement numbers down.

The interesting fact about China is that in all places you visit you will find different local food which can be very distinct. So in Pingyao we tried the mountain noodles, the pingyao beef (very much like corned beef), dumplings stuck together to a big round one and an another noodle dish where the noodels were big and rolled like a pancake. This was served with a dipping sauce. Main reason why we can't remember the names of the dishes is that all restaurants had pictures to point on 😊

Another evening was spend playing what Andy calls "Footminton". You play it with a ball similar to a badminton ball, with feathers and you kick it to the players around you. Another great way to get to know the locals. They were straight up for it and andy was sweating badly to keep up with the young girl from the shop across the road. He managed to impress everyone though! Especially when he kicked the ball onto our guesthouse's roof! The guys climbed onto the roof and got it back and the game could carry on.

The only thing we really wanted to do in Pingyao was to climb onto the city walls and walk around them. However, this pleasure was strictly and only allowed as part of the 120 yuan ticket. Josie tried to bribe the men but no corruption was to be had in China. So she went for a foot massage instead 😊 So what do we think of Pingyao? Well, it was nice to get out of a big city before jumping into the next one (Xi'an) but a bit touristy for our liking, though the little streets and the intact wall were very impressive.

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Photos

Traditional Chinese Courtyard
This was out the back of the new Harmony Backpackers place. When we visited it was not yet open, but the owners proudly showed us around their latest purchase

The Train Coach
Hard Sleeper - open cabins with 3 bunks high on either side making 6 in all. That was a very nice carriage compared to others that we encountered on our later journeys in hard sleepers.

The Train Gang
This motley crew was made up of the train attendent, some random chinese family and Joise and Eliseo.