Blogs from Pingyao, Shanxi, China, Asia - page 11

Hi all This week was dedicated to 2 things. The first was making our way from Kashgar in the south-west of china to Beijing in the north- east a total of over 5000 km! The second thing was learning about the history of China. Went to 2 good museums in Urumqi and Xian and we now know all the Chinese dynasties from 500BC to the last emperor in the 20th century by heart. we saw archeological sites in Xian the historical capital of China till about the 10th century and saw endless Confucian and Taos temples in Pingyao - one of the riches cities in China till the 19th century when it went bankrupted and did not have the money to modernize in the 20th and 21st centuries. Beeing a Celeb Everywhere we go people say ... read more

The train ride to Pingyao was not as comfortable as the overnighter to Xian but the good news is it was a little shorter. Left at 8:30 at night and arrived in Pingyao at 7AM, greeted by a sign directing us to the "Underground Funnel" to avoid walking over the tracks :). Pingyao is pretty small and a very traditional village. We spent the day on our own visiting various sites and museums and temples in the town; today we headed out to see the house of a very wealthy gentleman - the details of which I will post later. Suffice to say it was the size of a small town and quite incredible. While walking the walls around the home you could see cave houses built into the mountainside. These are actual caves that have ... read more

Well we survived the hard sleeper from Xián to Pingyao and met some lovely people in our compartment. They were all locals of course but the guy gave us little packet of the food that Pingyao is known for and it turned out to be corned beef so i was really surprised and tasted just like the way my mum makes it!!! the compartments in the hard sleeper are stacked 3 up on each side and i was lucky to have the bottom one and terry got the middle one. they do not have any doors and the passageway is open. lights are out at 10 pm and everyone goes to bed and starts snoring or so i am told as that does not worry me - its at times like this that deafness helps. our ... read more

Pingyao was our favourite place in china so far..we arrived and walked past street vendors and markets and inside the city walls which is the only complete city wall in china. the difference from everywhere else we had been was amazing...it has all its old traditional architecture, no pollution as cars are not even allowed in the city and is full of winding streets leading to nowhere in particular full of laterns, pedicars and markets..we got to our hotel which was a traditional courtyard house and then explored..we walked around most of the wall..looking into the hutong and able to see the entire city, and to the bell tower ect.. and also to some of the museums there which were brilliant; a national postcard museum, national newspaper museum..great comedy value. there were poeple playing chess and ... read more

Pingyao - 13.02.06 Pingyao is a small tourist-orientated destination offering a couple of streets of souvenirs, western food and a pleasant atmosphere. We stayed overnight at at one of the nicest hotels we've been in yet. Good food (western and chinese!), lovely and very helpful staff, cool chinese style room and free internet! The competition for business is fierce and we had a battle to get through all the touts at the station - one of whom got into our taxi with us! We got rid of her but then had to deal with the smiley taxi driver who was determined he would be the one to get the commission. We managed to lose him down a sidestreet and ended up just making it to the Tian Yuan Kui guesthouse alone! We spent a day browsing ... read more