The combination of my laziness and the things we are doing here mean that from this day on, or well, from when I started missing my Monday mark on, I won't be having a set date of publication any longer. :P I will get a post up each week for sure, but I can't promise when exactly they will show up. With that little disclaimer out of the way, let's move on to the big event for the week: my trip to the walled city of Pingyao.
The trip began strangely, as I ended up being the only non-Chinese speaking member to go. The other guys here from America either had other plans for the day, or were sleeping when we were supposed to leave. Granted, at 6:00 in the morning, I was wishing I was still asleep as well. But instead, I boarded a train with six native Chinese speakers, hoping that the trip didn't turn into a total wash because I couldn't speak the language everyone else did.
And I wasn't disappointed. Our tour guide spoke English, and so was able to answer all of my questions about the sites we visited. The first of those sites was a slight (1 hour bus ride) detour from Pingyao. Just like last week's update talked about the Rong Guo Mansion, where our book was turned into a film, this site was called the Qiao mansion, and was also the location of a movie. However, unlike the first mansion, this mansion actually housed a family in an older dynasty. I managed to get a few pictures here, and I'll share with you the ones that show the house the best, in my opinion.
This photo really shows the scale of the mansion. This expanse was one courtyard of the mansion.
This is a wooden replica of the mansion that is kept inside a room there.
While this garden has been, of course, refurbished and maintained, the original layout has been preserved.
After that, we drove into Pingyao, which is the last remaining walled city in China, and one of the few remaining in the world. With a six kilometer perimeter, the city is not terribly large. And yet, it houses 45,000 people, which means that walking through the streets can be very crowded. We took a small tour of the wall, a tour of an ancient prison and the oldest bank in China, and finally were given a chance to do a bit of wandering. Below are some pictures from my different tours in the city.
This is just one of the torture devices that was on display in the prison. This one was used to publicly humiliate criminals, as they could be pulled around town while hung up on this smaller version of a cross.
This is the North Gate of Pingyao, and the location we were able to walk around on for our tour.
This was a small section of an old Chinese "check" which demonstrated that they used watermark techniques long before the modern era.
The wandering around town was interesting, but was also a little strange because I did my wandering alone. With no one that spoke my language very well with me, I had a lot of time to just stop and look at whatever I wanted, without having to please other group members. Other than this trip, my week has been uneventful. We finished the second third of our Chinese language book, and so will be taking a small test over that next week. That means I've been doing quite a bit of studying and will continue to do so. Hopefully, there will be some word on this music performance I talked about earlier, but as of today, we haven't heard anything. :/ I will keep you posted on anything fun that comes up when I make next week's post. Thanks again for reading this.
Adam
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