Early start 4.30 though checked alarm through the night. Fast taxi to empty station so sitting waiting for 1.5hrs.
The landscape surrounding Beijing is pancake flat entirely arable cultivated. Smallish fields with uniform young green planting, not padi? Young wheat/corn?
Further on graduated to barren rocky hills, with large areas covered with randomly placed solar panels
Then entered a tunnel for 15 minutes or so at 198km/h, do the maths!!!
Numerous deep erosion valleys in the sandstone?
And incongruously a very English looking church (that flew by)
288miles in 3 1/2 hrs! With 6-7 stops included!
Arrived at Pingyau, 15 minutes taxi to “wrong end” of the ancient town! Allowed us to find some coffee and get an overview of town. We are just inside town wall. Must be about same size as Chester???
Our hotel is a Courtyard with basic but characterful room
Ying’s dad tells us they put coals under the bed during winter to warm you up!
Lunch was typical beef Shanxi noodles (hand made thick noodle famous locally and deliberately slightly tough but very tasty
Finally this afternoon we toured the Rishengchang bank house (bank note museum) original layout from 1823 as the first draft bank in China
A shop called Tasty Piggy, with its own…
Or if you prefer, a duck!
Tonight we went to the “Seeing Pingyao “ show which was quite amazing and tricky to describe!
In summary, man honourably searches for a lost boy with 232 soldiers in Russia, all killed and come back as ghosts. The family bloodline survive and establish a bank. Don’t ask!
It’s set over about 8-9 “rooms” over probably 2-3 football pitch’s in a decorated warehouse through which the audience and actors move All in Mandarin, but the spectacle was great
A highlight for me was a projected city wall 100yds long into which the “real life” ghosts appear and disappear V impressive but hard to describe
