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Pingyao
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So we arrived in Pingyao only to be greeted by our escort to the hotel... a golf car! Brilliant, i have never been so excited when so tired. Pingyao is very nice, in Sarah's words its 'like being thrown back 100 years, or so i imagine'. It consists of very picturesque (sorry, i need to get a thesaurus for my adjectives) cobbled streets with traditional Chinese architecture lining the way. It feels a lot more genuine than Zhouzhuang, which looking back on it, felt very sterile and artificial. I also had some more street food here, (god i never stop talking about food) what tasted like a honey pancake, cost 1 yuan and was damn tasty, better than my 15 yuan banana pancake i got at the hotel were staying at. It was made in traditional hawker style, in a giant sandwich maker, brilliant. Our hotel is this tiny place which was at some stage the residence of some rich family, and i love it. It keeps in with the architecture of the town and has more character than any hotel i expect I'll ever see.
The day was spent touring some pretty mundane places, it doesn't take a genius to guess that a tour of a former bank is gonna be a boring time (though it was the first place to use cheques in china, ooh i can barely contain myself). The Confucian and Taoist temples we visited was much more interesting though, and offered me some insight into some (resp) philosophies and religions that i previously knew nothing about.
The second day here featured a tour of 'Wang's family residence, basically a tour of a residence of a wealthy Chinese businessman. This guy made his money making tofu, however he then smoked it all away on opium (i imagine he had a bong 'as big as my leg, had to smoke it off a table' wiz!). Did find out how tofu is made though (i was interested). I unfortunately have forgotten the principles of Confucianism but I'll let you know when i remember them. In the afternoon me, Sarah and giz walked the city walls, much lie a smaller version of Xian's, while the others napped, i don't think they are appreciating Pingyao very much, probably due to the hard bed and bad nights sleep they're getting!
On the third of April we left Pingyao for Datong, which is really only a stopover for us on the way to Beijing. However on our travels we did visit a 'hanging monastery', so called because it literally hangs off the side of a cliff face. Supported by large wooden stilts, it is an abandoned temple built around 400 AD where Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism used to be practiced. Apparently the architects who have studied it believe it may have originally been at ground level but that the ground below may have been eroded away by water in the valley. There's a bit of history for ya. In the evening we had our legendary 'Mongolian hotpot' that dragon has been talking up soo much over the last few days. Maybe it was because i chose to go veggie for this meal but i was very disappointed here (or maybe it was just crap). It basically consisted of dipping a few bits of potato in water, which was ok but very bland when cooked and doing the same with several leaf greens, which unsurprisingly just tasted like soggy leaves. The pumpkin pieces we had just dissolved and got lost in the 'soup' and the glass noodles just tasted like plain pasta. I think it really is a meat orientated thing though, but i also reckon dragon could have chosen much better dishes, like tofu for example.
The next day we stopped off at the Yunan caves as well, however i forgot to write about this in my diary so i'll let what few photos i could take do the talking More thumbnails ...
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