Pingyao is a small Chinese village- 40,000 people. It has an intact 6 km Ming dynasty city wall which is reportedly the last remaining in China.
The bricks have stamps on them from their makers of the Zhou dynasty (827-728). Thank goodness there were some places that were not destroyed by the students during the 'Cultural Revolution'. There were some models of the devices used to thwart invaders of the walls.
It was a thriving merchant town in Ming and Qing dynasties when China's earliest banks were set up. After the heyday there was no money to modernise so the town is a great example of how things were with houses built around courtyards and narrow streets. The original houses had large wooden beams and rice paper windows.
As the banks had so much gold and silver it was necessary to have security guards and the place where they trained in martial arts is an interesting place displaying all the weapons they used.
Today there are hordes of electric carts ferrying Chinese tourists about the narrow streets.
They run over the wheat at the same time!
We met a very nice university student in his final semester called Edison. He joined us to explore the old town and we had great fun together and learnt a lot about China. Edison had a job at the ASUS computer company after his graduation so he was most impressed we had an ASUS notebook.
He told us this was the most complicated Chinese character
It was necessary to buy a ticket to have access to many of the old town historic buildings and it was valid for 2 days. There was no overall map of the sites you could visit so we have to wandered about until we found an entrance with a turnstile, it was hit and miss but there were signs in Chinese that we could not read. In 1997 Pingyao was declared a Unesco World heritage Site.
We visited a wealthy merchant's house that had the servants rooms lower than his to show his status in the community.
Our hostel was built around a courtyard and was very nice with all the mod cons.
One day we heard some music in the street and went to investigate and found it was a funeral procession. At the head of the line were groups of men carrying decorated bamboo frames followed by musicians and then these people who had trays with what looked like food offerings. The women wore white mesh rectangular pieces of cloth over their faces.
Outside Pingyao is Shuanglin Temple. It was a very interesting place with 2000 painted clay figurines. Unfortunately we were not allowed to photograph those inside.
There were beautifully glazed roof ornaments featuring white elephants. The temple is used as a training base for art students and several were there
sculpting some of the statues from clay.
This was a street stall selling meat
unrefrigerated and exposed to the elements! Maybe it was donkey meat like Edison had given me to try.
The bricks have stamps on them from their makers of the Zhou dynasty (827-728). Thank goodness there were some places that were not destroyed by the students during the 'Cultural Revolution'. There were some models of the devices used to thwart invaders of the walls.
It was a thriving merchant town in Ming and Qing dynasties when China's earliest banks were set up. After the heyday there was no money to modernise so the town is a great example of how things were with houses built around courtyards and narrow streets. The original houses had large wooden beams and rice paper windows.
As the banks had so much gold and silver it was necessary to have security guards and the place where they trained in martial arts is an interesting place displaying all the weapons they used.
Today there are hordes of electric carts ferrying Chinese tourists about the narrow streets.
They run over the wheat at the same time!We met a very nice university student in his final semester called Edison. He joined us to explore the old town and we had great fun together and learnt a lot about China. Edison had a job at the ASUS computer company after his graduation so he was most impressed we had an ASUS notebook.
He told us this was the most complicated Chinese character
It was necessary to buy a ticket to have access to many of the old town historic buildings and it was valid for 2 days. There was no overall map of the sites you could visit so we have to wandered about until we found an entrance with a turnstile, it was hit and miss but there were signs in Chinese that we could not read. In 1997 Pingyao was declared a Unesco World heritage Site.
We visited a wealthy merchant's house that had the servants rooms lower than his to show his status in the community.
Our hostel was built around a courtyard and was very nice with all the mod cons.
One day we heard some music in the street and went to investigate and found it was a funeral procession. At the head of the line were groups of men carrying decorated bamboo frames followed by musicians and then these people who had trays with what looked like food offerings. The women wore white mesh rectangular pieces of cloth over their faces.
Outside Pingyao is Shuanglin Temple. It was a very interesting place with 2000 painted clay figurines. Unfortunately we were not allowed to photograph those inside.
There were beautifully glazed roof ornaments featuring white elephants. The temple is used as a training base for art students and several were there
sculpting some of the statues from clay.
This was a street stall selling meat
unrefrigerated and exposed to the elements! Maybe it was donkey meat like Edison had given me to try.
