Pingyao, a traditional Han City, not many left and other China Things to Do Tips

Pingyao is an incredibly well preserved ancient city surrounded by a completely intact Ming dynasty wall. It was a prosperous town during the Ming and Qing dynasties due to the success of the merchants. Pingyao, with its very clever and entrepreneurial citizens, rose to be the financial capital of China. The Rishengchang Financial House is the first bank in China. It started as a small dye shop until the owner introduced a system of checks and deposits for its other branches. Eventually, other businesses, individuals, and even the government of China used the bank and its 57 branches around China. The Japanese invasion of China in the 1930’s and the advent of Western banking systems ended Pingyao’s prosperity and isolated it from the modernization other towns received leaving the ancient town untouched from the ugliness that plagues the majority of China’s ancient cities. The many museums in Pingyao give the visitor an excellent opportunity to see a town frozen in time. Also fascinating are the residences of the financial house owners and the ornate carriages and living quarters they enjoyed; the Ancient Government Building with the prison, torture chambers, halls of records, and magistrates quarters; the Chamber of Commerce; the Pawnshop; the Newspaper House; the Confusion Temple; the many Taoist temples; and the armed escort agencies with their large training areas bordered by fighting staffs, broads swords, and clubs. Perhaps the most interesting part of the town is the city walls. Originally built in the Zhou dynasty (827-728 BC), they have been clad in brick with beautiful watch towers and gates during the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644 AD). Walking along the 6 kms of wall, entirely intact, is one of the highlights of the Pingyao. They stand about 60 feet tall and are about 15 feet wide, perfectly paved in brick. The watch towers are in excellent condition and some can be climbed affording fantastic views of the one or two story building town.

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Address: Shanxi
Directions: Half way between Beijing and Xi'ian

The Muslim Quarter of Xi’an and its extraordinary Great Mosque are living testaments to the ancient Silk Road and its powerful and lasting influence. Shortly after Qin Shi Huang conquered all the Warring States of China and built his famous Army of Terracotta Warriors, the Chinese Han pushed west to explore the barbarian world of Central Asia. This was the beginning of the famed route that brought silks to the Caesars of Rome. It wasn’t until the Tang dynasty AD 618-907 that the Silk Road reached its apex. This period called the “Golden Age” of Chinese civilization saw the free flow of goods and ideas, and treasures from the China, Central Asia, India, and Europe. Buddhism from India forever changed China adding to the existing ideas Taoism and Confucianism that makes up the trinity of philosophy-religion that has shaped China today. Islam was also an imported religion and found a home at the terminus of the Silk Road, Xi’an. The Muslim Quarter is a vibrant and interesting community of Hui people that have made Xi’an their home for 1,250 years. The city of seven million melts away in the narrow cobbled lanes lined with small shops, restaurants, and homes. Women wearing the traditional head scarves and dresses and men with long white robes, skull caps, and long orange beards proudly go about their business through the crowded lanes or sit for a cup of tea or a game of cards and quiet conversation.

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Address: Shaanxi Province
Directions: The very heart of Xi'ian

The Hanging Monastery is a 1400 year old complex of stilted temples, corridors, bridges, and stairways hanging 50m off a canyon floor. People repelled from the top to carve out the mountain and build the monastery. It was built so the Buddhist monks could control the floods that often filled the valley below bringing death and destruction. There are beautifully carved Buddha’s in the temples dating from the Tang and Ming dynasties. The monastery is Taoist, Buddhist, and Confusionist and is visit by monks and priests from all three sects. Unfortunately, it has also been visited by Mao’s Red Guards who cut off the fingers and noses of these ancient relics during the Cultural Revolution. What a disaster, it takes one brilliant idea to ruin relics over 1000 years old! The monastery has been unable to stem the flooding of the valley below and a new dam now nicely does the job adjacent to the monastery instead.

To see the Hanging Monestary organize a trip with the CITS office at Datongs Train station. You can combine it with a trip to Yungang Caves (which are much closer). Tours leave around 9am.

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Directions: 75 kms southwest of Datong

These caves are one of mankind’s most impressive endeavors at monumental art and I had never heard of it before studying my guide book. Carved out of a sandstone mountain these caves contain no less than 50,000 Buddha sculptures with the oldest and the largest constructed in 460 AD. The Northern Wei dynasty began construction in the hard stone. The largest Buddha is 17 m high seated Buddha with thousands of smaller ones surrounding it. Skylights were excavated in the side of the mountain by men repelling from the top. They then carved out the images and removed the rock until they reached the bottom and carved out a proper entrance. It took 40,000 people 64 years to complete the giant seated Buddha. The proximity to the silk route can be seen by the Byzantine, Persian, Greek, and Indian influences in the dress and gods represented in the caves. As we were in the middle of our visit to the caves the wind substantially picked up and sand completely clouded the air. The sand and dust completely blocked out the sun like an early morning fog. We were later told that the sand storm was the worst in 5 years. The Gobi desert is just on the outskirts of Beijing and gets a bit closer every year.

The CITS office in the Datong train station can organize a tour of the caves and the Hanging Monestary which leaves around 9am and gets back around 5pm

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Directions: 11km outside central Datong

Like the pharos of Egypt who buried opulent objects or elaborately inscribed them on the inside of the tomb walls, the emperor Qin Shi Huan constructed an army and then buried it so that he too would be equipped to conquer the after world with the same vigilance and ruthlessness that he conquered China. Qin Shi Huang was the “1st Emperor” of China who unified the “Warring States” after more than 250 years. He ruled under martial law and subjugated people from Vietnam to Korea. He created the beginnings of the Great Wall by linking city walls that were used during the Warring States period. He employed 700,000 people to build a great army that would make him famous in modern times. He’s terracotta army includes over 6000 life sized figures all arranged in a rectangular bottle array facing east. At the front are three long rows containing 250 crossbow and longbow-men. Behind them soldiers bearing swords, pikes, and axes stand in long rows with 35 horse-drawn chariots near the middle. The soldiers were masterfully constructed and painted with each possessing a unique face and expression. All are standing in the possession with exactly according to the Art of War with the weapons at the ready. Amazingly, the Chinese used 10-15 microns of Chromium on their weapons and they are still sharp today 2200 years later. 10,000 weapons have been cataloged from the site. The Terracotta Warriors are not only an amazing site to behold, it is an invaluable record of 2nd century BC Chinese technology, culture, and military practices. Who knows what other treasures lay below the fields outside Xi’an. Perhaps an even larger army may be lying ready to be discovered by farmers or perhaps they are still busy fighting Qin Shi Huang’s battles in the afterworld.

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Directions: The Army of Terracotta Warriors is about 1.5 hours from Xi'an. You can take an organized tour but the local bus is frequent and gives you more flexibilty, not to mention it's cheaper.

It is possible to walk along the top of the Great Wall from Jinshanling to Simatai, 10 kms in total taking four hours. The wall serpentines up and down the razorbacks of the mountain with fire towers every few hundred meters, with 24 in all along the 10 kms. We have the Ming dynasty to thank for the former condition of the wall 400-500 years ago. The original wall is much older built by the three warring states 2500 years ago and connected by the Qin dynasty 220 BC. The Wall was a very successful elevated highway that allowed people and equipment to easily cross the rugged terrain. It also served as an early warning system for attacking armies. Wolf dung and straw would be burned on the towers to signal how many attackers there were. In this way the city of Beijing could prepare a defense. There must have taken an unfathomable amount of people to defend the wall let alone built. Some towns along the wall had one soldier for every inhabitant just there to defend the wall. There are some unique features in this part of the wall particularly the walls with in the wall that run perpendicular and have arrow slots for shooting down enemies that had scaled it. Small cannons, flying swords, and flying daggers have also been found around here. The walk along this ancient and massive structure was stunning. There were very few people beside independent tourists and poor Mongolian farmers trying to sell beer, water, and postcards. Much of the time, we were completely alone and could see the wall stretch and bend without a soul upon it.

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Directions: About 4-5 hours by bus from Beijing. You really must take a tour or stay in Simatai.

The Forbidden City is China’s oldest and best preserved cluster of buildings. Originally built in 1420 by the 2nd Ming Emperor both the Ming and Qing dynasties enjoyed the exclusiveness of living there. The complex is absolutely massive containing all that the emperor would need. Palaces, halls, gardens, libraries, theaters, and even a tennis court are a part of the complex. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Starbucks. Despite the size we were not overly impressed with the quality of the palace. The Forbidden City was build by the most powerful nation in the world at the time, the Chinese, and for us it just doesn’t come close to the magnificence of the palace-forts in Rajasthan, India. Viewing the rooms of the palace and great halls through a hand-smudged glass window from the outside while being bowled over by obnoxious Chinese tour groups greatly diminished the intimacy of the experience. One thing is absolutely certain, the Forbidden City is making up for all those years it was off limits as thousands upon thousands of tourists invade it each day.

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On the dreariest day of our stay here we finally got up early to go biking to the villages surrounding Yangshuo. We grabbed some sweet cakes from a local bakery, hired some bicycles for $2US, and negotiated our way through insane traffic that seems to have no rhyme or reason what so ever. We found the small road that left the hectic town and were very soon surrounded by rice paddies, small bricked villages, and of course jutting pillars of green-cloaked limestone that makes this region world famous. The Yulong River, which makes for a popular tourist excursion of bamboo rafting runs through this valley. Once we cycled close to the put-in spots, every villager we encountered greeted us with “hello bamboo” or to a lesser extent “hello bamboo lafting”. We just responded back “hello bamboo” and got smiles in return. Although the fog washed out the landscape to a dull green our experience was not diminished. Young men rode plows behind water buffalos covered in wet mud. Women carried beans, sod, and other fibrous green matter in heavy baskets slung low from flexing bamboo beams across their shoulders. Children’s playful voices emanated from small schools and old men played ancient games with Chinese characters written on wooden discs as they drank tea. After an hour of cycling we heard loud and prolonged pops of long strands of firecrackers. In various locations, usually just below large karst sentinels, we could see gray smoke rising above small groups of people with the cracking echoing around the valley. We surmised that today was a special day and as we cycled closer to one of these gatherings we saw gravestones adorned with burning incense and flower wreaths. Ancestor worship is an important part of Chinese culture and I wondered if this is what we were seeing here. As we cycled back to town we passed large groups of tourists with guides heading out to see the sights. As tiny drops started wetting our faces we could here in the distance behind us, “hello bamboo”.

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Directions: Ask your guest house for a map and directions on reach the road to the villages along the Yulong River. There are caves and other lookout points to seek out as well.

The terraces are cut along contours of the land and run all the way up a series of 800 m (2600 ft) peaks making the entire landscape look like a three-dimensional topographical map. Waterfalls are abundant across the terraces and create a magnificent chorus. More importantly, the water gives life to land and the people who till it. Water is cleverly diverted by earthen canals and by suspended bamboo aqueduct bridges that even span gaps across large mounds. Quaint covered bridges cross larger streams and stone paved pathways criss-cross the entire complex linking the villages and terraces in a vast network. The amount of labor required to clear the mountains of forest, cut the terraces in the earth, divert the water, build the villages, and pave the pathways must have been staggering. The Zhuong and Yao people who built these marvels of farm engineering immigrated from the north of China 700 years ago possibly as a result of the Mongol rule under Kublai Khan. These people are still here growing rice and living a traditional life. Besides what little they may get from the tourist trade, life here is still hard. Even now in the 21st century, the only means of building, repairing, and planting rice in these terraces is by hand or by use of the water buffalo or pony. In our village of Dahzai, there is a population of 3000 people. Each family, consisting of seven to eight, has their own three-story long house. The houses are tiered with each story slightly larger, which takes up less land giving them more room to grow rice and is pleasing to the eye. The first floor is for the livestock; chickens, pigs, and ponies. The second floor is the sleeping quarters for the family, and the third floor is for cooking and tends to be open on the sides. The villages are charming to behold snuggled up along the terraced mountains . The people compliment the beauty of the land with there colorful dress and long hair.

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Directions: Buses leave Longsheng every 10 to 15 minutes to Guilin. Buses to the terraces leave from Longsheng 5 times a day from 7:30 am to 3pm. Definately stay in Dazhai and not Ping'an. It's much nicer and less touristy.

Our destination was 20 kms over several valleys to the village of Ping’an from Dazhai. As we ascended to a viewpoint before dropping down into the next valley the sun peeked through the clouds and the water flooded terraces reflected the light in ribbons of silver and gold. We left the terraces with a local guide named Ting by following a small non-descript trail through the forest of pine and bamboo. After 30 minutes of walking through pine forest we entered another valley that was also completely terraced to the horizon. Along the way we noticed tombs in the side of the hills decorated with ribbons and offerings. Ting explained to us that there was a recent celebration for the ancestors of the village. The stunning landscape of terraces, earthen water works, covered bridges, quaint villages, and stone paths continued through to the village of Zhonglui and then to our final stop of Ping’an. Ting explained to us that each family has their own fields that are handed down from one generation to the next. They grow their own rice and harvest it once a year. The fields are now being plowed to remove grasses and wildflowers that grow during the fallow period. The fields are flooded in June and the rice planted. This must be a spectacular site. In autumn, the deep green of the rice turns golden and the rice is harvested. The winter drapes snow and ice across the valley, which must also be a beautiful sight.

If you can do a little hiking this is one of China's best. Ask the guesthouses in Ping'an or Dazhai if there are any locals that can act as a guide. We got a little lucky but a university student from the village asked us if we wanted a guide. We gave her $20 for a full day guide for two people.

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Directions: The Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces, Longji