25th October: Pingyao, China
Fireworks woke us, which seems to be a regular occurrence recently! The air was a little hazy and it was cold in our room. I’d looked up the weather for two wrong Pingyaos and still couldn’t figure out the correct one, so we prepared for it to be chilly. It wasn’t! Our coats quickly came off as the cloud burnt off and it was a comfortable 20C.
Today was a day for wandering and snacking. I felt totally shattered despite sleeping well, but I think it must be the recovery from the bug. Unfortunately, the coffee I got was so weak that I actually went back to ask if they’d forgotten to put the coffee in. They insisted on making me a new one that tasted identical. We decided to follow up the hot oat milk with some tasty snacks for lunch. Lightly spiced kaolaolao oat noodles; a pot of spicy tofu; and some kind of a very sweet fried flower, which was delicious to begin with but then hit you with a whole array of confusing spices.
I felt slightly queasy after that concoction, which wasn’t helped by our first historic building. The City God Temple had all kinds of statues and representations of people being tortured to death in horrible medieval ways. The buildings themselves were beautiful with the same layout of a central axis and side buildings we’ve seen in government complexes throughout Hebei and Shanxi. I struggled to get too enthusiastic about the Confucian Temple, especially as we came across a recently dead puppy on our way there. It appeared to have been struck by one of the tourist buggies. Just when we were feeling at our most perturbed, two girls in hanfu walked towards us, welcomed us to China, and handed us a card which said ‘may your tomorrow be even better than today’.
A few points of note, Confucius is actually a Western corruption of the name Kong Fuzi. Secondly, the repeated devil-like sculptures in both the Confucian and City God Temples were undoubtedly unsettling. However, these have also been repeatedly taken completely out of context and used for othering Chinese people and culture, especially in 18th, 19th and early 20th century western media. In reality, at least on a surface level, they are merely a more visual representation of the hell that western religions also allude to in order to keep people from questioning authority. I aim to learn lots more about Buddhism on this trip!
To perk us up, we tried some grapefruit and passion fruit red and mango jasmine ice teas. They were made from scratch by crushing the fruit and also contained jellies, like a way better version of bubble tea. Whilst ordering, Kaja was twice asked to pose for photos with different women. At least they asked! Throughout today, we must’ve easily had a few hundred photos taken of us, sometimes extremely blatantly. We’ve been brushing it off but it was a bit much today at times.
We got a bit lost with some of the museums included in our old city ticket. We thought we’d already been to both the Draft Bank and Armed Escort museums when we came across them further up the street. We still don’t know what the other places were! The bank was the first in China during the Ming and Qin dynasties and branches across the country and beyond allowed rich traders to travel without blocks of gold for the first time. The vaults, filled with replica silver and gold bars, could store around £3 billion! Another way to protect money and goods was to hire escorts – an order apart from the government but were phased out with the introduction of modern policing. What we thought were mannequins turned out to be real people in one exhibit, which made us jump out of our skins and then giggle hysterically! I also tried my hand at archery but I think the thieves might’ve gotten away!
Walking through the traditional streets, we grabbed another crispy puffed-up bread snack. This was surprisingly sweet and delicious with the sesame seed coating. We passed on the vinegar ice cream offered next door, however! As with everywhere we’ve been, lots of women were dressed in traditional hanfu dress and had photographers following them. This is serious business in the tourist centres! One much less serious group of middle-aged women also in hanfu had a loud speaker and were recording themselves dancing all around town, to everyone’s delight. Maybe TikTok?
Away from the tourist hubbub, we came across a lovely little place for dinner and ordered our usual array of (far too many) things to share. The dishes came one by one as they were freshly cooked. The first to come was a beautiful mixture of green herbs, almonds, spring onions, and sesame oil. You can’t go wrong with a whole plate of tofu either but what made it was having potatoes! What were effectively crispy chips, fried with chillies and spring onions, were just the sort of thing you could slap a fancy name on and sell for £13 at a festival. So good! I made the mistake of trying the chillies, which I’ve done in every place to see how they taste. This time they were so spicy that everything went dark and quiet for 15 seconds or so and I couldn’t sit still for about 10 minutes. I don’t think I’ll be doing that again!
