Where are John and Kara?: A weekend in Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China

Ancient Pingyao city looking North

We left Beijing late on a Monday evening, straight from work to the local train station for our trip to Pingyao.

Pingyao is considered one of the best preserved ancient cities in the world.

Looking out across the East City Wall

Pingyao, over 700kms south of Beijing is in the heart of the Shanxi Province and has a very long history. Although it was first built 2700 years ago by the West-Zhou King Xuan (BC827-BC782) it was developed further during the rein of the Hongwu Emperor (1370) who built the surrounding city wall.

The city wall which encapsulates the entire city extends 6.2 kilometers in length and has six entry gates and when your standing at the base, it's quite an amazing size!
It was designed to represent the shape of a turtle and therefore the village earned the moniker 'turtle city'. The wall is a massive height of 12 meters with a wide base of 8 to 12 meters.

Interestingly, Pingyao later became popular as China's first financial centre during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) and was home to over half of the banks in China. The city however lost a lot of business and economic foot standing very quickly in the early 1900's with the rise of Shanghai. Because of the quick change and citizens leaving by the thousands, the buildings of Pingyao city has been very well preserved.

Getting comfy on the sleeper train

Our trip to Pingyao was also our first experience on a Chinese sleeper train. We were very excited for the journey and stock pilled on peanuts, fruit and water. Overall the nine and half hour trip (715km) was far more comfortable than we expected; our expectations were low after travelling through India's rail network. However we still didn't get much sleep with all the stops and starts. The train had toilets and also free hot water, it didn't have a smokers section so we coped quite a bit of nasty second hand smoke.

Fried Bread Sticks for Breakfast!

When we arrived into Pingyao - it was raining!!! The first rain we have seen in China! Expecting the temperature to be in the mid to high twenties some of our group (we went with Patrick and Ellen from work) were a little under-dressed so we made a necessary stop to purchase umbrellas (for the males). The rain was a tad inconvenient, but mixed with the air pollution, it gave the ancient city a mystical and eerie type vibe and it also keep the other tourists inside. After a quick terrible-tasting coffee and a dry crumbly fried bread stick we started out exploring Pingyao.

John, Patrick and Ellen walking down West Street

We wandered through the main streets and admired the old architecture, we didn't go so much for the touristy shops selling the city specialities of cotton shoes and old steel knock offs, but just enjoyed looking and imagining what life may have been like in a past era.

Kara at the Kungfu training school

We bought a three day pass and visited several museums throughout the city. There were quite a few neat things that are harder to see in Beijing like the Kungfu training school and their collection of impressive swords.

The city bank museums also had an amazing network of underground vaults that we explored!

After a lunch of special local noodles (māo ěr duǒ) shaped like cat's ears, we ventured up the stairs located at the South gate and explored the south section of the city wall. The wall was quite wide at the top and has a large watch tower every 200 meters. It gave us a great view over the town. We decided not to walk too far and after a short stroll we descended the Wall and located our hostel for the evening.

Top of the South Wall, Pingyao

Our hostel was old - super old. It was very special and not similar to anywhere we have stayed before. It was a traditional Qing dynasty building and our attic style room had ancient beams running through at shoulder height. Our 7 bed dorm was in the front building which overlooked the first courtyard. You can see John in the picture below outside our hostel.

John outside our very old hostel, Yammen Hostel

After exploring some more of the city and getting dinner at a nearby restaurant we retired back to the hostel for some competitive card playing.

Very dusty streets in Jinsheng, Lingshi County

On our second day we were up bright and early and ventured back to the train station. We boarded a train which took us further south to Lingshi county. One train and two bus rides later we arrived in (what felt like very rural China) a small, very dirty, very dusty and very polluted township -Jingsheng.

Wang Family courtyard

Jingsheng is really a bit off the beaten track and our foreign faces caused quite a stir! Jingsheng is home to the former luxury residence of the Wang family!
The Wang's (aside from a very popular surname in China) were a very wealthy family that made their fortune selling bean curd. The compound (150,000sqm) was built from 1762-1811 and many generations and their Wang descendants lived in the 2,078 houses found within the compound. We explored the exquisitely decorated compound for several hours before heading back to Pingyao later in the afternoon.

John playing on top of the City Wall

With only several hours before our train back to Beijing we wanted to explore more of the ancient wall. However we got quite lost and it took us over an hour of walking around the bottom of the wall to find the one entrance. Once on the wall we began walking from the South with the plan to walk to the West gate via the East and North gates. After 2kms it started to rain! Of course then we were stuck with no way down!

The East and North gates were closed so we walked over 5kms across the wet and windy wall, stopping for the odd shenanigans before racing to the train station in the dark!