Ancient Walls and Courtyards

Pingyao is perhaps becoming famous for its international photo exhibition, this may only be on Chinese television though. What it has is an exceptional number of well restored historical buildings each with fantastic courtyards and mazes of rooms linked together through halls and alleyways. One wanders around for hours through these buildings getting lost in the temple of gods with its kitsch hell display, trying to find the money in the oldest bank and generally enjoying the sun (at last blue sky and not the white haze which covers the south). With the sky being blue and the town quite small the night sky finally revealed some stars, in the larger cities a clear sky is no guarantee that anything is visible in the sky due the light pollution.

Night falls

We met Veronique (de Bordeaux) who with her Mandarin and experience in China (1 year study) was able to help us out and provide some insights into the Chinese psyche. Her point of view is that the Chinese are uncultivated, of course that's her only dissapointment here since she comes back every year. It's true that the Chinese do spit at every oppurtunity, on the bus, train, in the theatre or "politely" in a bin, then of course there is all the rubbish that gets dumped and ends up in the rivers, the noise with doors slamming, shouting down corridors to find your neighbour, lets not forget the bellowing down mobile phones like a sketch from Harry Enfield. Most Chinese prefer shopping in glitzy arcades to considering art or nature, when not shopping they are money oriented working 7 days a week, only the wealthy take holidays. Even the Chinese people we've met agree that making money is very important and basically it's a status symbol allowing a better wedding. All of this we interpret as being ignorant but it's just a way of life, with the sheer number of people living here the Chinese have just got used to it. Most Chinese we've met are curious about foreigners in a kind of naive cute way (except the questions about salary).

Hostel Courtyard

The west has litter, people who shove you on the metro, American conversation often centres on money and selling is more aggressive in Morroco and Eygpt but in general we're more courteous. There are still the 5% (50 million) Chinese who enjoy art, the outdoors and will pay for your dinner and of course the 2000 years of artifacts they have still around.

We managed to hire some bicycles for a trip out in the countryside with of course another temple in mind. In anycase this gave us an excuse to cycle through some fields and the girls to test out their face masks (Simon isn't sure who most ressembles a bandit but both will pass muster). In the fields of growing sweetcorn the occassional sunflower pokes over the top to encourge the corn to grow higher. There were a number of brick factories which could now even be housing or perhaps they're being used to rennovate the old buildings. A last point of note was the mansion in Qiaojia where a powerful family of bankers lived, over 300 rooms, and it's also where they filmed "Raise the Red Lantern" (epouses et concubines).

City Wall

City God Temple

Sunset on West Gate

Traditional Painting

How Many Arms

Womens Hall

Bandits

Brick Furnaces