Pengyu International Hotel Changzhi

... point to a wedding ceremony, or at least the part in the wedding where the groom has to perform tasks in order to access his bride. It appears that our groom is already quite fuzzy from too much friendly baijou.


ENTRY BY: Rooster

Despite the cold, I really enjoyed this place... nobody was around it was quaint, old, cultural and off the beaten path. Things just ran slower here and it felt like we were in ...

... so that's OK.





ENTRY BY: Rooster

I want it on the record that Grace was very reluctant in joining in the fun with the martial arts weapons. I urged her to take a weapon in hand and she was terrified about getting in trouble BUT when I reminded her that no one was even present to check tickets let alone provide security, I saw that twinkle in her eye and I knew at that moment ...

... complete, the clerk promptly closes her window for the day...which is *exactly* the moment my fledgling Chinese reading skills kick in and I notice that our tickets are for the wrong berths. Dennis immediately flags the clerk, who slides her window open to talk to him and then closes TWO windows to discuss our request extensively with another staff member. Egad. Thirty minutes later, our transaction is complete ...

... it this morning. I knew it would be rough when I could see my breath in the bathroom and had to hop back and forth on the stone floor for the cold. But standing under the trickle of piping hot water was luxury, and an hour in my sleeping bag following helped the blood start flowing again.

What little heat there is here comes entirely from coal. A coal-fired haze dulls the sun, a sight all to common in this country, more noticeable here than anywhere. This province ...

Pingyao was once the richest city in China, being the banking center to the empire. It fell into obscurity for about 100 years, but now is a major tourist attraction. One of the biggest attractions in Pingyao was US! It turns out we hit the town ast the same time as an international photography exibition and the town was jammed with Chinese photographers ...

3:00pm So this morning I walked around town pretty early and saw most of the sites in Pingyao that I hadn't seen yet. Among them was the first bank of China, the first money escort service, and a Taoist temple. The temple was pretty nice. one of the guys, though, by the main altar, did some type of supposed good luck blessing and then (of course) tried to make me give a donation "for the temple." I immediately told him I wasn't having ...

... very nice and relaxed. I played UNO with some of the people at the hostel, practiced my chinese, slept a bit, and just took it easy. I went ahead and decided to ask the hostel to book a ticket to Xi'an for tomorrow night at 8pm. Tomorrow should be a bit more of just relaxing. I'll probably go walk around the city walls and visit some of the other sites early in the morning, check out before 12, and hang out at the hostel.

... the road was a major life or death mission. We climbed the mountain, along with thousands of others who weren`t deterred by the 1500 metre, 6000 step climb to the top. We had our photo taken for being foreign. We went along with it and pretended to be famous. The highlight was the empty cable car down, from which we saw baby mountain goats.

... ever holding a monkey? I had to leave on the 26th to get back to Beijing and fly home and I was really sad about it. Pingyao is a really cool old city and the walls are all intact. There are lots of good places to eat, good shopping, and tons of museums, not to mention that monkey you can hold. I wish I could have stayed there a week. Instead, I took a cab to Taiyuan, which was more polluted than Datong (which I didn't know was possible), and flew away. Boohoo!

... in winter. A thin mattress on top of a pile of bricks pretty much sums it up. It did have red lanters hanging inside, which sold me. A lot of hostels in this small city are made from the remains of family courtyards. Most people say travelling to Pingyao is like travelling back in time, because it's one of China's ancient towns that still has preserved Ming and Qing Dynasty architecture. It's surrounded by an old defensive wall, and the old ...