Pingyao Hotels
|
  | |  |
rain on red lanterns
Entry 6 of 20 | show all | print this entry |
|
on the tour in datong i had met three women (lauren, ellen, and char) from chicago, friends who were all studying physiotherapy and who had just graduated from their program. their trip through australia, new zealand, and asia is a graduation present to themselves. after quizzing the tour leader on what local foods we should be on the lookout for we set out for dinner. on the way, in the hotel that we were all staying at (where i think every backpacker stays in datong), ellen met a guy named jeremy in the elevator and invited him to come along. jeremy, as it turns out, is an american from new york who studied at mcgill...i had fun talking to him about montreal...it was very much a 'small world' moment. we had a great dinner at a nearby restaurant, sampling the oat noodles and oat dumplings recommended to us, as well as these small fried cakes often served at weddings, one kind filled with vegetables and another with sweetened bean paste (the pastry filling of choice in china). the menu was classic...crocodile, pickled pig face, chicken liver with ox penis...and dog, which jeremy actually ordered. it was served cold and thinly sliced. the meat was very mottled and looked like the cross section of a sausage. thankfully they also had a good selection of vegetable dishes too...i ordered pickled cabbage with ginger and chili, and braised eggplant.
i left everyone to go and catch my overnight train to pingyao. as pingyao was not the last stop, and the train was supposed to arrive at 7 am, i was worried that i would sleep through it. i didn't need to worry though because the attendant for my car took my ticket as i boarded and give me a plastic card with my bunk number on it. just before the pingyao stop she came by to take back the card and give me my ticket (and to wake me up should it have been necessary...but i was already awake). before the train arrived i took a couple of minutes to scan through the lonely planet entry for pingyao and found something that i probably should have noticed earlier...there's nowhere to change money in pingyao. i looked in my wallet...not good. i did some quick math and decided that i had enough to squeak by until i got to xi'an.
the old city of pingyao is a walled enclave filled with old grey brick homes with sloping, tiled roofs dating back to the ming dynasty (14th or 15th century). it's famous in china for the degree to which it's still intact and self-contained...all of pingyao's modern, often ugly, development had taken place outside the old city walls. there are red lanterns hung all over, and against the grey walls they are very pretty. my introduction to pingyao, however, was less than ideal in that it was cold and rainy all day (and all night)...and my desire to explore the city died right off. it didn't help that pingyao is overflowing with chinese tourists right now thanks to the holiday week...i can see now why there's been some talk of spreading out the holidays a bit...having two weeks a year where everyone in the entire country has time off at the same time is very chaotic. i spent most of yesterday hanging around the hostel here, reading, playing guitar and with the hostel's resident kitten. there was a big group of american students staying here yesterday too...i'm not sure if they're all on exchange in china and therefore using the national holiday as a time to explore as well...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) and the requisite shops and vendors selling all manner of trinkets pingyao is very beautiful, in a slightly grey and dusty kind of way. and the chinese tourists are all in tour groups (finding independent chinese travelers is a rarity) and they only stick to the main drag, following the tour leader's flag and sometimes all wearing the same hat or vest (or both). pingyao's big enough that i could go exploring the back streets and alleyways in relative tranquility. i was happy to discover a local snack...peanut brittle! it's cheap and delicious and the stalls that sell it make it on the spot...someone with a giant wooden mallet pounding peanuts and sugar into sheets at the side of the street.
i leave for xi'an tonight, home of the terracotta warriors. lauren, ellen, and char are all arriving in xi'an tomorrow as well (from beijing)...we exchanged contact information and so hopefully we'll get to explore xi'an together. jeremy's just started teaching english in beijing and he has to be back for monday to start work again. after china, the three women are going to south-east asia, after which lauren is going home. ellen and char are flying to india though, and the timing is such that i might be able to meet up with them in delhi, which would be a lot of fun.
i discovered why i lost my pictures finally...i didn't corrupt them with careless unplugging of my card, it was a computer virus. i had decided to just reformat the card, but after messing around with it so much to see if i could recover the pictures my camera no longer recognized it, even to format it. so today i plugged it into one of the computers here to wipe it clean, a computer which happened to have an active anti-virus application running. as soon as i plugged in the card it detected a number of viruses and began to clean them off. i will definitely back up my photos before i bring them anywhere near the sketchy computers here! i miss my mac...;)
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries by tofudan, from China or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
2 votes 
This is a top pick!
