Blogs from Pingyao, Shanxi, China, Asia - page 5

Pingyao A UNESCO world heritage site and proclaimed by experts to be one of, if not the, best preserved old Chinese cities, Pingyao is a city with charms. Pingyao And we certainly had a Hollywood entrance. The pick-up from the station was a local rickshaw - the type which is essentially a 2-stroke motorcycle onto which they somehow weld enough structure to provide three benches suitable for four travelers and their affects. The Hollywood bit came as just before we left our driver (sadly not dressed in a well-tailored suit and white driving gloves) pulled the thick cloth “wall” of the vehicle down before fastening it securely, leaving us cocooned in the dark, windowless exterior. Whether it was for the benefit of us or the locals is unclear. Still, helped the suspense no end. Surrounding the ... read more

Day 480: Thursday 22nd October - Finally getting out of the city for an ancient Chinese town I think one of the reasons that I haven’t enjoyed my second visit to China as much as my first (apart from the weather not being as good) is that I’ve almost exclusively spent my time in cities. Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Tunxi, Chengdu, Xian, Luoyang.....nearly all huge cities of several million, choking with traffic, people and smog. I’m no city person and the only place where I haven’t stayed in the city was visiting Emei Shan and travelling up the Yangtze by boat. I think the reason I’m looking forward to Pingyao so much is that it isn’t a city. Well it is but it isn’t but it is a nice place to stay....read on and I’ll explain. I ... read more

We started at 7:00 am this morning, so far no one ever late. The ancient city is two hours away from Taiyuen 太原, where we stayed. Admission fee for the Pingyao ancient city is 120 rmb for all different locations; the city wall, the museums, some scenic spots. I had the half price student discount for the admission. I think if you just want to go to the shopping street is free of charge. The walled city is so big we need to take golf cart to the main area to save time. By the time we take a walk on the city wall is almost noon, bad lighting for pictures. There are so many peoples is unbelievable, may be is accessible by train. We have to stay together all the time otherwise will get lost. ... read more

Ok so me and Jon are pretty rubbish at keeping blogs so have decided to just go city by city rather than full day by day accounts as we just cant keep up, so this is what we did for the rest of our time in Pingyao,- Hired bikes and cycled to Shuanglin temple, its 7km from Pingyao. Its a really lovely buddhist temple thats 500 years old. The detail of everything was amazing, i would have loved to have seen it when it was first built and all the colours were still visable. Had our packed lunch then cycled back. it was really hot and it made me feel quite ill so spent the afternoon reading in the courtyard. Later that evening we bought our tickets to our next destination Xi'an and we had a ... read more

We arrived into the walled city of Pingyao at 6.49 in the morning and were met by a guy from the hostel. We waited a while for a friend from Xi'an to arrive but her train was late so just headed to the hostel on the back of a local taxi with the sun starting to rise. The streets were deserted at the early hour. We went for a walk along the old streets and looked into the many local shops. All of the buildings within the walls were of gray bricks with the stereotypical red lanterns hanging out into the streets. It was all very nice. We were both pretty tired after the early start having slept on the train so spent the evening in the hostel with a DVD and our books. The following ... read more