Pingyao: A walk through historic China
Walking sections of the walls allows excellent views across the city’s many tiled rooftops and down into domestic courtyards, as most buildings within historic Pingyao are mainly low-rise. Grander buildings such as the Confucian Weimao Temple rise distinctly above most domestic and commercial buildings packed tightly together across this amazing testimony to earlier periods from northern China’s history.
It felt so easy to feel the grandeur of Pingyao’s early days as a major regional trading center while wandering along its Ming and Qing dynasty streets, where I passed the gates of many impressive residences. Red lanterns hung along lanes, outside heavy wooden courtyard doorways. This came with an impressive backdrop or silhouette of the town walls rising above, of several magnificent temples and classical buildings.