Ancient(?) Pingyao (平遥)

Pingyao is probably like nowhere else in China, nowhere that I have heard about anyway. It's an 'ancient' city according to tourist info, and the locals are proud to emphasize that the city walls and buildings are original and not rebuilt or renovated in anyway, just 'well maintained'. Most of this well preserved architecture is from 19th century, which is in real terms not really that long ago; I'm not sure what exactly the definition of 'ancient' is, though I always thought it hinted at something rather older than 200 years.

However, it is an interesting place to wander around and reminded me in some ways of Khiva, the ancient walled city in Western Uzbekistan. Though the architectural design is of course quite different, the layout and atmosphere of this small walled city has similarities; narrow, quiet, traffic free lanes, local homes hidden away down small alleys where old ladies hang out their washing and kids and animals run around chasing each other, tourist stalls and shops selling local arts and crafts, locals get on with their daily life, preparing food, washing, cleaning, repairing, playing cards, Chinese chess or just sitting around drinking tea. The town has a little buzz of life and activity everywhere you go. And in the evenings as the sun falls towards the horizon of the city walls, the town is illuminated with a wonderful orange glow.


Left: Archway by the Eastern gate of Pingyao.
Centre: Men sit around the streets all day, chatting and smoking.
Right: Communist Party magazine from the newspaper museum.


Left: Streets being improved constantly, by a strong female workforce.
Centre: Ying and Yang, the symbol of Taoism.
Right: Cycling is the best way to get around the city walls.

Pingyao's walls are 1500m long on each side, with four main gates one at each cardinal point. The walls surround a dusty little town, whose streets are constantly being dug up/replaced which generates a lot of dust and dirt all around, it didn't feel like the healthiest of places to walk around, which when you consider the pollution in many Chinese cities, is saying something.

I visited a number of sites, many are museums in old houses, home to exhibitions of different arts or places of historical interest, such as martial arts, ancient newspapers, the oldest bank in China and the home of its rich founder. Most are quite similar, courtyard, buildings, displays and seeing a few is enough. There are also a couple of temples, gate towers and the option to walk around the city walls which offer some nice scenes of life in Pingyao. Apart from the dust it's quite nice to wander, there are no vehicles within the old walled city, just bicycles and motor rickshaws which can run around the outside, there is no neon lighting here either! At dusk, the streets are lit only by the red lanterns that hang outside many of the local shops, cafes, guesthouses. Comparing again to Khiva, this was a difference, there the town descended into total darkness at dusk.

Outside the walls, this small city carries on much like any other, with food stalls in the streets selling mystery meats, water melons and pineapples on sticks, while cars, mini-buses, pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, motor rickshaws all weave in and out of each other in some seemingly chaotic fashion that seems to function quite well.

Last day I took a cycle ride to Shuanglin Si, a temple a few kms outside of Pingyao, on the way the roads were even dirtier and dustier that the old city. Dust/sand on the roads blown up by passing vehicles created a scene similar to a desert sandstorm, and, I was unfortunate enough to have a lorry full of sand drive by, scattering a large amount over me which made my head itch the rest of the day. Even if the pedal had not broken off the bicycle when I was a km or so short of the temple, making cycling pretty difficult, (have you ever tried cycling with just one pedal ?) and resulting in a long walk/ride home, it was still one of my least interesting and worst cycle rides ever !

Wutaishan to Taiyuan

Wutaishan (五台山) is one of the four Buddhist mountains in China. Accessible via a long detour off the Datong to Taiyuan road, the route winds upwards through the mountains on its way to the pass at the Northern peak of Wutaishan and then descends into the village of Taihuai (台怀). There are five mountain peaks around here and the fresh air and alpine scenery in the mountains is a refreshing change to the polluted cities around. Many temples here survived the Cultural Revolution due to the remoteness of the village and they display some fine and ancient architecture in a village that has been a Buddhist centre since at least the year 58, during the the reign of Emperor MingDi. Taihuai is a quiet, peaceful place with monks wandering the streets, while tour buses hop around everywhere carrying groups of Chinese tourists from site to site.

There are too many temples to go into detail, but I visited a few, climbed up 1080 steps which I thought was just one or two flights, to the Dailuo Peak. There was a small temple just up the steps, which I was aiming for, but as I ascended I realised there were more and more and more steps and many, many people heading up this way because it turned out to be going to the Shancai Temple near the peak of the mountain. I could no turn back then, so carried on up with the occasional friendly companion who wanted to be with the strange, exciting foreigner.

Overall, the fresh air is nice, but apart from the temples in the centre, everything is far apart and it would take some time and effort to get to any of the five peaks, yet alone one of them. There is little else to see or do once you have seen a few temples, so after two half days in Taihuai, I felt it was enough and found a bus onto Taiyuan (太原) , a necessary stopping point to change transport before heading to my next destination, Pingyao (平遥).


Left: The white stupa at Tayuan Si, is the symbol of Taihuai village.
Centre: On the way up to Dailuo Peak, I found this man making stele carvings.
Right: Twin Pagodas at Shuangta Temple, the symbol of Taiyuan.

The minibus driver was a complete idiot driver, I have been in some pretty wild bus journeys before, but this guy was worse than any other I have experienced. Lucky I think I have grown accustomed to it and was not too bothered most of the time, but his regular driving on the wrong side of the road to pass cars waiting at a red light so we could just carry on and weaving in and out of vehicles on either side was a bit stupid. He was probably a driver grown up on computer simulations who cannot distinguish between games and real-life. But, we got to Taiyuan in one piece and was dropped at the train station. Train tickets are apparently notoriously difficult to get hold of for this journey, so I didn't try. There were no buses from the train station concourse area to Pingyao, none from the nearby long-distance bus station as it was not considered a long-distance trip and they in fact left from a station in Southern Taiyuan. I also could not find any shared cars heading that way, so I stayed a night there. This spare evening time gave me a chance to read something about Taiyuan and decided in the morning I would go and see its famous twin pagodas at Shangta Si (双塔寺 ,Twin Pagoda Temple).

It was worth the effort, it was a lovely sunny day and the temperature was good, it felt like Spring at last. The flowers and trees had begun to flower and meant the area with wandering verandas and pavilions was a colourful scene. I climbed the thirteen floors of one of the towers but sadly the view was poor, the windows became smaller with each floor you ascended, the inside of the tower became narrower, so the windows became gradually further away and on the thirteenth floor, there was a mini window at the end of a mini-tunnel, which I would have to have crawled a metre or two into to reach the small window and get a view. Good exercise but a waste of time. With the springtime weather I jumped into the town centre briefly and found the main square had a few drink/eating stalls so sat outside in the sun with a drink, first time this year it's been warm enough where I have been and how nice that is to do.

Actually managed to get a train ticket to Pingyao in the morning which was better that heading out to the southern station so was pleased with that and had an interesting journey chatting with an old man and a couple of young, cool, trendy Chinese, while surrounded by intrigued, or is it just nosey, onlookers. The train though was absolutely packed, especially around where I was sitting, seriously overbooked with wuzuo (no seat) tickets, so in the end was not so bad to get off when we reached Pingyao and I did so with a couple of new words added to my Chinese vocabulary.

Datong II & Yingxian's Wooden Pagoda

Next day I met up with Trevor who is teaching Beijing and who I met on yesterday's trip. We found a bus heading to Datong South station and after a 30 minute drive through various parts of this larger than I imagined city (that's the case with most Chinese cities though), we arrived in Datong South bus station, bought a ticket to Yingxian (应县), went to the bus and found it was already driving out of the station. Quick dash and we caught it up at the gate, which is usually easy in Chinese bus stations as they have to fill out some paperwork nonsense before leaving the station, which usually takes a minute or two. Yingxian is a small town, but home to the oldest wooden building in China, a wooden pagoda (应县木塔, Yingxianmuta), built in 1056 during the Liao dynasty. It was originally constructed of entirely wood, with no metal nails, but there are plenty there now. The wooden structure is a network of beams and interlocking brackets that function well, as the pagoda has survived seven earthquakes. The area around the pagoda is currently under redevelopment with new (but traditional style) buildings being built in front, housing tourist shops and restaurants, while outside of here and to the west and east, new high rise flats are being constructed replacing the old buildings that used to be home to local residents. On the way back to the station we again caused excitement amongst the staff of a restaurant where we went for lunch. They seemed wary and kept nudging each other to go and serve us, but we eventually, as is often the case received, the full service with all three or four waitresses taking our order while we tried to work out and communicate what we wanted.


Left: Giant incense sticks at Huayuan temple (look relative to building behind).
Centre: A dragon form Datong's Nine Dragon Screen.
Right: Bundles of money used for I don't know what. (see previous Datong item).

Back in Datong, we visited the city temples and the nine dragon screen. At forty-five metres long and eight metres high, this is the largest nine dragon screen in China. With nine different dragons detailed in glazed tiles, different colours and curling in different shapes, it is colourful and lively display.

Huayuan Temple originally constructed during the Liao dynasty in 1062, has two parts, which annoyingly means you also have to pay twice. The main hall in the upper temple is the second largest in China and these temples are unusual for facing East, as they were constructed by a sect that worshipped the Sun, Chinese temples generally face South.

Datong - Yungang Caves and Hanging Temple

Datong (大同) in northern Shanxi (山西) province was established as the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty in the year 398 by the Turkic Toba people. The Northern Wei people became Buddhists and during their reign built constructed the Yungang caves just outside Datong. A second period of capital status for Datong came in 907 when the Liao Dynasty made it their capital, this period created the Huayuan and Shanhua temples within the city and the oldest wooden pagoda in China at nearby Yingxian.
Datong is a dusty, coal producing city, which providing over 30% of China's coal. There are also lots of outdoor markets selling fruit, strange bits of meat and a surprisingly large amount of money. These notes look like perhaps old Dynasty notes, or maybe it's for Chinese monopoly, I really don't know and could not understand the explanation of what it was for. But it was strange to see at one night market, stall after stall selling nothing but this money, something I have seen nowhere else in China before nor since.

Yungang caves (Yungang shiku, 云冈石窟), whose construction began in 453, are a set of Buddhist grottoes carved into the side of a sandstone cliff. They are the first of the three major Buddhist caves in China, the others being the Lonmgmen caves in Luoyang and the Mogao Caves in Gansu. See my visit to Mogao Caves in Dunhunag, Gansu here. The caves were made by first digging out a section at the top of the cliff, then digging into the rock down to the ground and outwards. Craftsmen from India and Central Asia were involved in the work and this can be seen in some of the carving's foreign influences. There are around fifty caves in total, but numbers 21-45 were closed for repair, which is a shame, though these are supposedly the least interesting among the site. I saw twenty caves including the most famous of all, number 20, which sits in the open for everyone to see and because of its popular use in marketing of Chinese tourism has become known as "China's Minister of Foreign Affairs".


Left: Yungang Cave 20, "China's Minster of Foreign Affairs".
Right: Hanging temple at Hengshan mountain.

Next site was the "Hanging Temple" (Xuankong Si, 悬空寺) of Hengshan (恒山), which is one of the five holy Taoist mountains in China. Built on the side of a sheer cliff face and anchored with wooden beams into the rock, the temple does look rather precarious for sure. There has been a temple here since the Northern Wei Dynasty but the present structure is more recent. The temple was destroyed a number of times due to flooding of the Heng river below and so each reconstruction was built higher than the previous temple. Inside are halls containing shrines to all three major religions in China, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Originally a Buddhist temple, the other religions were later incorporated after the destruction of the temple as they believed that that would help to prevent future disaster.