Pingyao - A walled gem
26.10.2010
8 °C
Pingyao
Arriving at a station with a welcome from someone with a card with your name on is good. We had an interesting night with the Chinese odd couple who seemed not have travelled by train before. Breaking wind, snoring, clearing the nose and finally at 5pm started to smoke !!!!! He was encouraged to go into the corridor also a non smoking area. All smiles saying our good byes. Hotel straight out of visions of rural China. Courtyards and single story wooden carved walls & tiled roofs with sea creature decorations. Our room is just what we required warm, good facilities including wifi ! Ticket for all the museums bought and start visiting banks and escort guard (securior) houses. Martial arts + temples and after a short break up to the walls 6.4 km of high solid walls with towers and views of inside & outside the old city. Threshing peas using the local traffic, prison with serious electric fence, drying maize on flat roofs, courtyard gardens, bronze statues, solar water panels - still hazy though!
Met Lidia in South street, tea at Harmony guest house, booked tour for Saturday.
Quick change & out to bamboo noodle cafe as recommended in lonely Planet for a meal £3.30 for meal of noodles & veg for two, beer & tea.
Found Chinese wine - Great wall red wine - Cab/sau very good 12% for£2.80. Mosquito preventative actions for first time.
Breakfast not included in the price but the taxi was at the Yi De.
Tour was just the price of a cramped minibus. Over a hour + time, stopped in a petrol station & very questionable driving. Lesson don't book tours you are uncertain of what you are getting. Meal included or not ? Price of entrance + guide ! On top of which we have already paid for a days ticket in Pingyao. Walked around old walled town -Zhangbi fortress - older building parts included in road - courtyards & alley ways going back hundreds of years! Possibly the next heritage site - it was very interesting.
Meal tonight in a restaurant that had a "chinaman" beating a drum and chanting us in. Ordering is still a gamble - a general assembly of Pingyao delights - but it was very good - whatever it was.
Sunday wet and cold ........
Managed to removed date on Pingyao ticket so we able to visit some more places in side the walls. Some amazing bits of history captured even the torture museum left one in no doubt of the harsh feudal society China used to be- similar to our Warwick castle museum. Taoism offers an ecological slant on God- full circle. It appears there is a mini god for every eventuality ie rain, harvest, wealth .........
