Pingyao: Street Scenes

From Shanghai, China's largest city, we traveled to Pingyao, a small town of about 40,000 southwest of Beijing in Shanxi Province.  Going to Pingyao is like taking a trip in a time machine from China's sleekest, most modern city to a small town preserved in the past.  During the Ming and Qing dynasties (ca. 1350-1900), Pingyao was a powerful banking center, but when the Qing emperor abdicated, the city became a provincial backwater.  As a result, much of its earlier character has been preserved virtually unchanged.  The town is still surrounded by massive Ming-era defensive walls built in 1370.  Inside the walls, more than 3000 historic homes, shops, and temples have been preserved much as they were a century or more ago. http://picasaweb.google.com/trucknmama/Pingyao#

In keeping with the town's historic atmosphere, we stayed in a rustic inn in a quiet little alley.  The inn is built in a traditional 18th-century courtyard house, with each room looking out onto a stone-paved open courtyard.