Pingyao

After a few hours broken sleep on the night train out of Beijing we had to change trains in the town of Tiayuan, where it seemed that this portion of the 10 million train travellers had never seen 2 silly westerners with overly big bags on their backs before – providing much amusement and attention!
Pingyao is an ancient walled city and where it once was a thriving merchant town it is now like stepping back in time and seeing what China was once like – well without the shops selling tourist tat! Whizzing through the narrow streets on a rickshaw on our way from the train station you instantly got a feeling of what this place was all about – street vendors selling fruit from the back of bicycles, little old ladies selling weird looking cakes in doorways, kids playing with kites and shouting ‘Hello’ at us….and best of all a donkey and cart with the unenvious task of pulling the sewage waste out of town! As we pulled round a corner we were confronted with a little man balancing 2 buckets of slops on a pole over his shoulders – ahhh the old days didn’t smell so good!  We spent the best part of 2 days just exploring the little streets whilst the whole time ducking and weaving out the way of bikes in all shapes and forms! The perimeter walls that surround the town are 6km long and you can walk on top the whole way round giving some time to escape the mayhem of the streets below. By night Pingyao lights up with red lanterns hanging from doorways and windows while life seems to calm down a little. On our final evening we stopped for dinner in a little local eatery, much to the amazement of the owner who then proceeded to give us a couple of free beers and free deserts with our meal – so for around ? we left happily both well fed and watered. He also insisted, well kept shouting photo whilst rumaging through a draw for his camera that we all have our picture taken together before we left. Was a nice way to leave Pingyao as from here it was another night train, this time further south down to Xi’an.