We arrived at Pingyao after six hours travelling from the Black Dragon Temple to find that no large vehicles were allowed inside the city walls. The truck was left in a large parking area, our luggage loaded onto an electric vehicle and we walked into the city to our guest house, the Hong Bao Gai. Most of the vehicles in the old city were of electric drive but cars were allowed, possibly only belonging to those who lived in the old city. There is a new city, very modern and large, only the area round the old city had all the roads ripped up and lots of building work being done. Not a very pleasant place at the moment.
Pingyao is a walled city, the walls being constructed in 1370. The north and south sides have one gate each. The east and west sides have two gates each. The walls are about 12 metres high and 4 metres wide with a perimeter of 6 kilometres and are surrounded by a moat. There is a tower at the four corners and 72 watchtowers. Pingyao was the financial centre of China about 1900 with 20 financial institutions within the city comprising more than half of total in the whole country. Among these is the 'Rishengehang' considered to be the first bank in China. This bank controlled almost 50% silver trade in China before going bankrupt in 1914 because of the start up of new banks.
The old city is a tourist trap with nothing but shops and eating places all selling the same sort of things. It’s certainly a mecca for the Chinese tourist and quite expensive really. Most of us were lucky as entry to the 50 or so temples and other attractions was by a ticket. The over 60’s were allowed in on production of a passport, others, including the Chinese, had to pay £15 for a three day pass (expensive for the Chinese so it seemed). One or two temples were aright and then the others repeated themselves. Payment even had to be made to go on the walls.
I did manage to walk round the top of most of the city wall, not all, as some was closed off due to bits falling off the wall. It looked to have been built (and some of the houses in the city) of a brick core covered with rammed earth in parts and in others just plain rammed earth. Even though bits were falling off it looked to be of a fairly strong construction. The old houses did not fare as well though as many had very big cracks in the walls and others had fallen down in parts.
As a general comment it looked to me as though the Chinese women were very fashion conscious of their shoes as a lot wore very fancy shoes with very high heels.There were a lot of massage parlours in the city, mainly for foot massage and the tank of fish nibbling on the foot type. These did a very good business with the Chinese later on in the evenings. There were fabulous smells from the food stalls and restaurants when walking down the street in the evenings. Included in the menu for the restaurant I ate in last night were the following dishes :
Flesh of donkey Pingyao Red ear wire Home smoked elbow Your face lettuce slender Boil the pimple Pork fried on rotton son Stir fried beef with a rotton son
One time I was walking around a man invited me into his courtyard house. I was shown the bedroom and proudly shown the en-suite with the sit-on toilet, the children's bedroom then the other parts of the house. It was all very clean and although in the noisy part of the old city, very quiet as well.
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| Gatehouse |
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| Gatehouse at night |
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| Outside the walls |
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| A watchtower from below |
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| A watchtower |
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| Showing the inside of the wall |
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| Add caption |
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| The new gatehouse at night |
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| The new gatehouse at night |
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| A street gatehouse |
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| Looking into the city from the wall |
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| A street at night |
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| A street at night |
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| Street performers |
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| Buy your tropical fish here |
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| A young girl practising Chinese caligraphy |
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| Breaking concrete by hand |
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| The emperor |
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| Decorations for the opening of a new restaurant |
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| How many pigs! |
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| A guest-house courtyard |
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| A guest-house courtyard |
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| I did not see many roofs like this |
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| The courtyard of a private house |
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| The Roman Catholic Church |
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| An old city street |
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| An old city street at night |
The Hanging Temple or Monastery is a temple built into a cliff (75 metres or 246 feet above the ground) near Datong. It was built more than 1,500 years ago and is known for its location on a sheer precipice and also because it is the only existing temple with the combination of three Chinese traditional religions, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiselled into the cliffs. The main supportive structure is hidden inside the bedrock The main parts of the building hang from the middle of the cliff under the prominent summit, protecting the temple from rain erosion and sunlight.
Why build a monastery like this? Location is the first reason; building a monastery on the cliff could shield it from floods. In addition, the mountain peak protects it from rain and snow; and the mountain around it also diminishes damage from long-time sunshine. The second reason is that the builders followed a principle in Taoism: no noises, including those from roosters crowing and dog barking so from the upper rooms there is no noise to be heard.
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| Views of the Hanging Monastery and surrounding valley |
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| Me hanging on |
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