Pingyao

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We left Wutai Shan as we had arrived... on a chain smoking Chinese mini bus, this time with the added entertainment factor for poor Ann who got to sit next to a mad monk who sneaked her moby number and then wanted to listen to her iPod... apparently Simon and Garfunkel were a bit hit!! The journey to Taiyuan, where we were to change for our final destination of Pingyao was one of contrasts. Initially we got to see some of the stunning mountain scenery that we'd missed because of the bad weather on the way up - green, mountainous and peaceful. As we got to lower grounds that changed to soot filled coal producing industrial towns. Towards the end we saw the strangest thing - on a motorway there were people in orange suits sweeping the road with straw brushes!! We couldn't decided if this was prisoners being made to work or job creation at its height - I mean, mannually sweeping a motorway??!!

As with all my bus journeys in China so far, working out where you are when you get dumped at your destination is always 'entertaining' and this was no exception. There were two bus stations marked on our map and it seemed we were at neither. As we stood there looking rather perplexed a Chinese lady came over who spoke a little English and we managed to get from her that we needed to go to another bus station that was a taxi ride away. All good stuff but we were a bit bussed out by then and quite fancied a train... which according to our LP was entirely possible. By now a small crowd had gathered round us and word had obviously spread that two strange English girls were causing trouble as another lady came over who spoke more English - she didn't know about trains but was lovely and put us in a taxi to the station. At the train station ticket office we didn't even have time to look perplexed - a station guy came straight over asked where we wanted to go, put us in the right queue and told the ticket lady what we wanted. 20 mins later we were on a train to Pingyao! Of course all we'd managed to get was standing tickets rather than the soft seater I'd hoped for but this time we knew how it worked... well in theory. We tried shooing some feet off chairs in one carriage to take some empty seats but we got jabbered at in Chinese and unsure of what was said we moved on. In the next carriage though it was all different... a guy in army fatigues gave up his seat and another lady shooed us to sit down. OK so we'd traded our chain smoking bus for a chain smoking train but the train is really more pleasant... in theory at least you're only supposed to smoke between compartments and hard seats aren't so bad for short journeys... good for the posture I think would be the phrase ;0) For some reason we'd thought that the journey would take 3 hours and that Pingyao was the end of the line.... so it was just as well that I stuck my head out the window when we pulled up at a random station... we were wrong on both the 3 hours and end of the line. In our hurry to get of the train before it moved off Ann and I managed to take out a few locals with our bags but they took it in good humour ;0)

Outside the station we were met by a local driver keen to bike us to our hotel.. for a fee of course. The worrying thing was that he knew exactly what page of the LP our hotel was on. Indeed apart from Yangshou, Pingyao is the place where I have seen more foreigners than anywhere else. Pingyao is a town, surrounded by an intact (albeit restored) 6km stone wall - the current wall hails from the Ming era, although the original town and wall were built during the Zhou Dynasty (827-728 BC). At 12m high and an average width of 5m the wall is made of rammed earth strengthened with a covering of bricks. It is surrounded by a moat, which these days is dry. There are six gates, all of which project outwards - two each on the east and west and one each in the south and north sides. This has given the city the name "Turtle City" with the two gates on the south and north representing the head and tail of the turtle and four gates on the east and west as the four legs. The doors on the south and north stand opposite each other, like the head of the turtle extending out and two wells just beyond southern gate are like a turtle's two eyes. In 1997 Pingyao became listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. Inside the wall is very traditional - whilst there are signs of new buildings and extensions being undertaken it is very much being done in the 'traditional' style with the same grey brick. Outside the wall is quite a different matter, where the new white tiled Chinese buildings dominate. It was also interesting walking round the tourist streets and the diving off down some of the back steets - as you can imagine the two are very different. The touristy areas are colourful - red lanterns, people selling all sorts of 'antiques', jewellery, bags, clothing etc whereas the back streets where the locals live are almost devoid of colour. It feels like you're walking along corridors of grey, with no windows and only a few doors. Peering through these doors and looking down from the tops of the cities walls you get a glimpse of the courtyard living that lies behind the narrow grey streets.

Pingyao was home to many of China's earliest banks, starting from the late 18th Century when an enterprising dye merchant introduced a system of cheques and deposits that evolved into a financial agency for other businesses....today this dye shop is the Rishengchang Financial House Museum. Many of the official sights within Pingyao are financial house museums but even Ann the accountant wasn't willing to see all 20+ of them. After the first few we started opting for the ones with pretty courtyards or that looked a little different - this is how we stumbled across the martial arts museum.... from the look of the implements that they used to train with this was rather different from much of the training of today! Some of these things could have done a real nasty! We also saw the former government offices...these seemed to be mainly judicial, including a prison - the 'soft punishment cells' remained but the 'hard punishment cells' and 'water torture cells' have long since been destroyed... nice. The Temple of the City God, built during the Northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1127), was pretty with lots of bright blue and green tiles and I think it was in the Taoist temple that we had the strangest experience - three guys came up to us and insisted they have their photo's taken with us.... on our camera's and for no fee!! Absolutely unheard off!! ;0)

We had 2.5 days in Pingyao which was maybe more than we needed but the hotel was lovely and we spent a couple of chilled mornings just lazing around the traditional courtyard drinking cold drinks, reading our books and lapping up the sun. We left Pingyao on the night train to X'ian... much like Pingyao this was really a bit of a tourist train, in fact I think there were almost as many westerners as there were locals which is a definite first for me! And it was an easy journey... no wrong stations, no hard seaters, no people shouting at me in Chinese.... all a bit dull really ;0) I would like to have seen the views by daylight though... I don't for one moment imagine they were scenic, in fact the impression we got from the noise, lights and soot was that it was very much industrial coal mining still but it would have been a definate contrast from the Tibetan mountains that I'm looking at now writing this ;-)

Next up.... Terracotta Warriors and more sacred mountains...

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