We arrived in Píngyáo, touted as Chinas best-preserved ancient walled city, at 0430 in the morning. We quietly whizzed through the deathly quiet, dark streets of Píngyáo in an electric tuk-tuk, the driver of which didn’t see the need to use the headlight. Once through the city gates and within the city walls it really was a spooky place. Ghostly grey, no movement whatsoever, absolutely no lighting and all the streets looked like grey alleyways and reminded me of a completely deserted ghost town. Imagine a street like the below in the dark and us putt-putting our way through in the light of a weak moon in the early morning. It looked 10x worse than it does here!
I was getting quite nervous as the driver twisted and turned the tuk-tuk through the streets, getting further and further away from the train station, street lights and, seemingly, civilization. OK, that might be a bit dramatic but I have a vivid imagination and was a tad scared. Every now and then we’d come across a haven of lights, red lanterns and doorways that weren’t shuttered up but we carried on by. I did breath a sigh of relief when we got to the hostel and were welcomed inside. Somewhat surreally, there were about four of the staff up and about playing pool. Quite why we didn’t know and certainly didn’t think to stop and ask. The staff at the hostel were so good and let us into our room straight away so we could sleep. Unusual for a hostel to do this; we had expected to be sleeping for a few hours in the foyer.
When we woke a few hours later, it was like we were in a completely different place. The streets were alive with people, the lanterns swung in the wind and everyone had the shutters open and was doing business. This is the hostel we were staying in
and it had a lovely courtyard off which the rooms were accessed
Píngyáo was founded in the 14th century but didn’t ever modernise as it hit poverty in the 20th century and while there are a few obviously touristy streets, much of the old city is in its original state. It was originally a banking town, home to the first of Chinas banks apparently. This is the view of one of the main streets in Píngyáo, viewed from the tower in the centre of the city.
The city walls look in pretty good nick from the outside
but from the inside, they just looked like walls of mud
This is the tower in the centre of town, by day
and by night
We did notice what we thought was an unusual number of Chinese tourists, many of whom were carrying very flash cameras. Unbeknown to us, there was a huge photography exhibition on and we’d arrived bang smack in the middle of it. We don’t think we’ve ever been photographed so much! We were even photographed eating dinner! We were the only westerners in this place and I looked up to have a camera flash go off in our faces from outside the window. A Chinese man bobbed his head in a thank you of sorts and wandered off grinning, clearly happy with his shot.
The photography exhibition itself was weird and strung out all around the city and we came across it in the oddest places, in old unused factories
and in the side streets
This building was very odd as there was clearly some good gear in here, set up amongst a lot of photos on display and whole lot of rubbish on the ground. These women were having a good giggle about something on a computer
There were also tour groups milling round but all were Chinese. The funny thing was that the leaders had hand-held microphones that they seemed to use even when they only had six people! The noise they made was just awful. There were very few western tourists around and we suspect many bypass Píngyáo in favour of going straight to Xi’an – both places are an overnight train ride from Beijing (although in fact Píngyáo is only halfway between Beijing and Xi’an - go figure).
This guy had milk for sale and women were marching down the street carrying little pots and pans that he filled. You’ve got to love the smoke hanging out of his mouth, the ash dangling over the hole of the milk container!
These pelts were hanging in a few shops. We think they were wolf pelts but some of the patterns looked very odd and I suspect that they’d been dyed.
The second day we were there it was really really cold and we didn’t see blue sky at all. In fact, the only blue sky we’ve seen since we arrived in China was the day we went to the Great Wall. Its been grey since!
As this photo shows, Píngyáo had great potential for greyness and, without lanterns and people, could look very stark
but there was colour in the many temples and old residences throughout the city
Píngyáo is a good stop off point between Beijing and Xi’an if you’ve time and it is an impressive old place with loads of character that you probably won’t find in the larger cities. It has its touristy streets but if you go off the beaten track and eat in places with locals, you’ll find some great food and people. If you’re pushed for time you could spend a day there, sandwiched between two overnight train trips but you’d have to be pretty keen to do that. The crazy thing is though, that you can only book onward train tickets from your point of departure, which doesn’t make it easy to plan ahead with any certainty.
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I was getting quite nervous as the driver twisted and turned the tuk-tuk through the streets, getting further and further away from the train station, street lights and, seemingly, civilization. OK, that might be a bit dramatic but I have a vivid imagination and was a tad scared. Every now and then we’d come across a haven of lights, red lanterns and doorways that weren’t shuttered up but we carried on by. I did breath a sigh of relief when we got to the hostel and were welcomed inside. Somewhat surreally, there were about four of the staff up and about playing pool. Quite why we didn’t know and certainly didn’t think to stop and ask. The staff at the hostel were so good and let us into our room straight away so we could sleep. Unusual for a hostel to do this; we had expected to be sleeping for a few hours in the foyer.
When we woke a few hours later, it was like we were in a completely different place. The streets were alive with people, the lanterns swung in the wind and everyone had the shutters open and was doing business. This is the hostel we were staying in
and it had a lovely courtyard off which the rooms were accessed
Píngyáo was founded in the 14th century but didn’t ever modernise as it hit poverty in the 20th century and while there are a few obviously touristy streets, much of the old city is in its original state. It was originally a banking town, home to the first of Chinas banks apparently. This is the view of one of the main streets in Píngyáo, viewed from the tower in the centre of the city.
The city walls look in pretty good nick from the outside
but from the inside, they just looked like walls of mud
This is the tower in the centre of town, by day
and by night
We did notice what we thought was an unusual number of Chinese tourists, many of whom were carrying very flash cameras. Unbeknown to us, there was a huge photography exhibition on and we’d arrived bang smack in the middle of it. We don’t think we’ve ever been photographed so much! We were even photographed eating dinner! We were the only westerners in this place and I looked up to have a camera flash go off in our faces from outside the window. A Chinese man bobbed his head in a thank you of sorts and wandered off grinning, clearly happy with his shot.
The photography exhibition itself was weird and strung out all around the city and we came across it in the oddest places, in old unused factories
and in the side streets
This building was very odd as there was clearly some good gear in here, set up amongst a lot of photos on display and whole lot of rubbish on the ground. These women were having a good giggle about something on a computer
There were also tour groups milling round but all were Chinese. The funny thing was that the leaders had hand-held microphones that they seemed to use even when they only had six people! The noise they made was just awful. There were very few western tourists around and we suspect many bypass Píngyáo in favour of going straight to Xi’an – both places are an overnight train ride from Beijing (although in fact Píngyáo is only halfway between Beijing and Xi’an - go figure).
This guy had milk for sale and women were marching down the street carrying little pots and pans that he filled. You’ve got to love the smoke hanging out of his mouth, the ash dangling over the hole of the milk container!
These pelts were hanging in a few shops. We think they were wolf pelts but some of the patterns looked very odd and I suspect that they’d been dyed.
The second day we were there it was really really cold and we didn’t see blue sky at all. In fact, the only blue sky we’ve seen since we arrived in China was the day we went to the Great Wall. Its been grey since!
As this photo shows, Píngyáo had great potential for greyness and, without lanterns and people, could look very stark
but there was colour in the many temples and old residences throughout the city
Píngyáo is a good stop off point between Beijing and Xi’an if you’ve time and it is an impressive old place with loads of character that you probably won’t find in the larger cities. It has its touristy streets but if you go off the beaten track and eat in places with locals, you’ll find some great food and people. If you’re pushed for time you could spend a day there, sandwiched between two overnight train trips but you’d have to be pretty keen to do that. The crazy thing is though, that you can only book onward train tickets from your point of departure, which doesn’t make it easy to plan ahead with any certainty.
View Larger Map
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