Back across the Yellow River towards Beijing - it looked almost like an old landscape scroll, at least when I looked at my photo later! Departing from our original itinerary we took a detour to meet some friends in the town of 平遥 Pingyao in Shanxi, which manages to be a theme park with original buildings.
Pingyao was a banking center (the place where the world's first banker's cheques were written), bankrupted by the imperial family and then neglected long enough for its unmodified Qing streets and buildings to become a major tourist draw - a popular way-station between Beijing and Xi'an; it even has its own bullet train stop. We weren't there long enough for their pricy one-pass-for-all-attractions to make sense so we walked the streets, peeking into courtyards either derelict or turned into fancy accommodations and museums and watching the sky clear.
Pingyao was a banking center (the place where the world's first banker's cheques were written), bankrupted by the imperial family and then neglected long enough for its unmodified Qing streets and buildings to become a major tourist draw - a popular way-station between Beijing and Xi'an; it even has its own bullet train stop. We weren't there long enough for their pricy one-pass-for-all-attractions to make sense so we walked the streets, peeking into courtyards either derelict or turned into fancy accommodations and museums and watching the sky clear.
