Tag Archives: Pingyao

Pingyao, Sabbatical

Day 11 – Bike tour around Pingyao

Today we want to do some active time – so last night we asked Lilly to arrange us some bikes and she would get us, if possible, also a child bike for 10 RMB each. So in the morning after breakfast, which was again very good with the fresh dumplings, some guy showed up with two of the oldest bikes we saw in a long time as well as a foldbike for Charlotte. The foldbike was ofcourse much to high so we had to switch to a child seat for the bike of Martijn.

In a typical Chinese way this took a bit back and forth, in the end we had an Ok seat which was modified so that our daughter would fit…. so on the road we went.

Well, that was definitely not the typical tourist scenery road we picked. We wanted to go to the XXX monastery about 7km outside of old town Pingyao and the road there took us through some dirty factory outskirts of town. It was definitely interesting, this was the real China that you normally only see from a train window 🙂

On time we had to carry the bikes across a road work site, but all in all it was nice to be on our own. And we had the opportunity, as we passed the high speed railway station, to get our next train tickets that we ordered for the night train from Kunming to Guilin. After some doubt regarding the local airline the decision was made to have another ride in a night train, something that we all like.

At the temple we were amazed by both the amount of and the situation in which the many Buddha statues were. But hey, lets put some incense on for them, Charlotte also really likes those sticks. So we bought them with the guy who introduced himself as “bike-watcher” and charged us 4Rmb for parking our bikes. One thing we did forget though, a lighter to get that incense burning… so anyone nearby, there are quite some sticks in the temple waiting to be “enlightened”. Further on in the temple we discovered that art students were making copies of the statues, some of them really impressive.

After viewing the temple we tried out the local restaurant and had also the here famous Pingyao beef dish, which is basically cold beef sliced with some herbs, nice enough, but nothing to have twice 🙂

On the way back we used more of the main street and arrived safely at the hostel, proud on our 16km biking tour in the traffic of Pingyao, China. In the evening we used the bikes again to have another diner at the food market and slept like babies afterward.

 

Pingyao, Sabbatical

Day 9 – Trainride to Pingyao

As somehow our back packs were getting bigger and heavier (or at least it felt that way) we took a taxi to the train station and that was a good idea. During a nice ride we could enjoy the Tianamen Square and the entrance to the forbidden city one last time and were amazingly fast at the train station, of course way to early.

After going through security check (they’re here everywhere) we found our waiting room and the  whole high speed train thing in China is really more like checking for a flight that the train rides we know.

Packed like mules we enjoyed some of the interesting things in the train station:

Packed for the trip

Interesting fruit to buy

Now this is interesting

The train ride went very well and we found out that we definitely need to take some food, as Charlotte kept asking about the (very expensive) food there was in the train 🙂

Arrived in Pingyao we were picked up by the hostel and were amazed by the beautiful place we landed in. The host Lilly was very attentive and we quickly felt at home in here hostel, where we  then had a nice diner and after that a little tour of the streets before we laid down in old Pingyao for the first night.

 

Pingyao, Sabbatical

Day 10 – Pingyao City Wall

After a good night sleep we woke up to find out that there was no power. After asking Lilly we quickly found out that the whole inner city was out of power and it should be back somewhere in the afternoon. No Problem, we do not need electricity, right?

So we had a very good breakfast (dumplings, egg, toast) and went to do a walk over the city wall of Pingyao. There we found this crazy old guy making a living by posing for photos, and tourist as we are we of course had to join this performance.

From the city wall – we walked from the south gate to the west gate, about 1,5 km – you have a great view on the rooftops of Pingyao and can really appreciate the old city center. Then you turn around and see building blocks after building block, the best way to feel the up rise of the dragon.

After the wall tour we went to a local food market and had some quickly made noodle soup and other food. Especially these beautiful little mushrooms really did it for me. Tired from walking we took a small tuktuk back to the hostel and rested – of course still no electricity 🙂

To conclude our tour of Pingyao for the day we visited the famous first bank of China and went down in its vault. Charlotte was totally amazed “Wow, wow, wow, daddy, look at all the gold they have here, wow wow wow…” of all the replicas that were stashed there 🙂

Before dinner we visited a kind of small children park outside of the south gate and got a flying daughter.