Zhong Shu Yuan Hotel Pingyao

A brain **** brought me to Pingyao. I should have hugged the coast, made my way straight south towards Shanghai when the weather started turning. But I read that Pingyao was nice, the best preserved ancient Chinese architecture in the country. So I came, 12 hours on the train southwest of Beijing, not realizing two things: one, that I was adding about 24 hours of travel time to my trip, and two, that it was puking snow and minus twelve in Pingyao. <br> <br> Anyway, I'm rolling with it ...

... a disappointment, but you certainly do get Wang'd out after a while, and not having a guide means you are free to wander around but also free to not really learn much. <br><br>After lunch (see photos for a great shot inside the restaurant), we headed to Zhangbi Ancient Castle (&#24352;&#30887;&#21476;&#22561;)--aga in, think more of a walled town than a true castle. The main reason we came to Pingyao (besides the city itself), I was not ...

... at the shop to buy breakfast we found a bike hire place with tandem bikes. 2 mins later and we were on the road - a bit wobbly at first but we soon found a rhythem. We cycled around the town walls and after exiting a gate we went around some more of the outside pausing at cool spots to take photos. Locking the biike up in the main street we went up the town tower and checked out the view. It was a bit of a feat to get up it as the stairs were ...

... will drive on the other side of the road until another vehicle comes along then they will cut in, however, they also do this on the blind corners. The section of wall that we were at was not yet very popular with tourists as they were still repairing parts of it, but was good for us as it wasn't too busy. We set off from the bottom of the of the mountain and there was a bit of a walk until you get to the wall. We had a choice of either get a cable car ...

... we nauwelijuks de weg naar onze hostel terugvinden. Emy was al naar huis (die wilde de tour voor morgen voorbereiden). De orientatieproblemen hadden niets te maken met de hoeveelheid biertjes overigens. Het is gewoon dat alle gebouwen op deze ene vierkante kilometer op elkaar lijken. (en wij de hele dag nog geen map in handen hadden gehad). Morgen vertrekken we naar Xian. Nog een stad met een stadsmuur, maar waarschijnlijk wat minder dorps dan hier. We zijn nieuwsgierig.

... four miles) to Pingyao, the Shuanglin Temple is reputed to be the 'ancient painted sculptures museum'. The temple houses more than 2,000 colorful sculptures reflecting the exquisite skills of the artisans of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. The Shuanglin Temple was included in the World Heritage List by UNESCO as an important cultural site of Ping Yao City in 1997. Originally, the ...

... Pingyao things are changing and from the looks of it they are changing fast. Like Yangshuo all those years ago, there is only a hand full of western tourists to be seen (so far at least). There are no KFC's or giant food chains and you can still sit with your egg, bacon and coffee breakfast without being disturbed. BUT...judging by the amount of Chinese tourists here, I'm ...

... left and right as everyone seemed to be taking pictures of me. People would say hello (their only english word) and some told me that I was "cool". Wow, I was the Chinese Fonz! At 8:30Pm I left on my overnight train to Xian. I will be happy if I never board another overnight train. Once again I had to push and pull to get my ...

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... i think they all might have been from some sort of affiliated fraternity/sorority group. i tried my best not to find them annoying...and failed almost immediately. thankfully they all left last night...they filled the entire common area at the hostel making it feel like a zoo. it's much more calm now. i spent the morning making up for lost time and went exploring the old streets of pingyao. even with the mass of chinese tourists (they easily outnumber us westerners 50 to 1 ...