Most travellers have never heard of Pingyao as it's a tiny little town in between Beijing and Xi'an with not much going on, but we heard it was a really cool place to relax in so off we went. Unfortunately we were unable to bag hard sleeper tickets on the train and could only get seated, for an overnight journey of about 10 hours this is not ideal. So imagine this, when all the seats are filled up, they proceed to sell people standing tickets and so the train was overcrowded with half of china blocking the aisles, ladies holding babies and huge laundry bags full of goodness knows what all over the place. We were stuck in the middle of all this chaos and when 4am came round and the conductor shouted “Pingyao” it was a frenzied rush to try to get our backpacks from underneath the seats and get to the door. Nobody moved out of the way and the door was blocked by about 6 people lying or sitting in front of it and by the time we finally got there the guy said it was too late and we had to get off at the next town!!! Luckily there was an English speaking girl on the train who explained this to us, and said the next town was only 20 mins away which was a relief because sometimes the train doesn't stop for hours!
We finally got off the stinky train and found a nice taxi driver to take us back to Pingyao. The
only thing was that it took over an hour to find our hostel as the town has old style tiny streets made for carts not cars and he didn't have a clue how to get around it! An old lady picking up plastic bottles helped us in the end, but when finally reaching our destination we found that the hostel was fully closed up and everyone had gone back to bed (they were picking us up at the station had we got off the train!). So we sat on the doorstep like two vagabonds and watched the little town slowly coming to life and the sun rising over the the rooftops. Little old ladies were up and about first, going to the market to buy their vegetables and stretching and exercising. It was cool actually looking back but at the time we were just cold and exhausted!Our hostel was in a building constructed for the Emperor when he was coming to visit (which in the end he didn't) so it was quite plush in an old sort of way! We had an old style bed made of bricks and period furniture, and it was accessed through a little courtyard, it was just lovely.
Pingyao has retained it's old city wall and we enjoyed walking on
part of it. All the buildings within the city wall have been maintained in the old period style and we watched the smoke curling out of the little chimneys and spied on people going about their daily routine. We watched the sun setting from our high vantage point and it was all very romantic! You can go into many of the buildings which have been converted into museums describing what their use was such as the prison, bank (Pingyao was where the first currency was used), important peoples houses etc so we had fun poking around the dusty little town for a few days. When we decided it was time to leave we were told that lots of 
students were going back to college due to (another) Chinese holiday so there were no bus tickets left! We only got stuck for an extra 2 days and when we finally got a ticket it was at an inflated price because they were in such high demand! That is China all over, where there's a profit to made, you can bet it will be!Xi'an:
Having finally escaped from the quaint Pingyao we found ourselves back in a large city. Xi'an is a big place as has all the usual hustle and bustle associated with a large Chinese city. The main attraction here of course is Emperor Qin's Army of Terracotta Warriors. Its hard to know what to expect from this well known tourist attraction, but one thing I hadn't considered was the size of the pits and the number of warriors. Other than the outdated introductory video (which could desperately use a revamp) the site is presented very well, getting close to some of the warriors and having a close look at the detail of the faces and bodies really brings them to life. All the warriors on display have been painstaking reconstructed as they were damaged either by looting or the roof collapsing, to try and imagine
them as they were originally with colour and all standing in formation just blows your mind. There are still a lot to be reconstructed and also other pits to be uncovered but they are trying to find a way to unearth them without the sunlight bleaching their colours.Surrounding the city is the ancient city wall, but don't let its age fool you, it is by no means modest. It protects a large part of the city and stands as high as most buildings and almost as wide. Walking around the top you get a view over the city's rooftops and can watch life on the streets far below. We also visited the centrally located Bell Tower, an ornate building in the centre of a crossroads. We were lucky as we got to see a traditional Chinese musical performance, with instruments of the olden days. We spent one evening visiting the Big Goose
Pagoda, where at 9:00 every night they put on a fabulous light and water show, complete with 'Jingle Bells'! The show was spectacular and on a par with Disney shows I have seen, it certainly draws a crowd and you have to push to get a decent view.
No comments:
Post a Comment