Pingyao Underground

With the trains getting very busy because of the upcoming Chinese new year, the journey up to Pingyao was hard work. We had to sit on a night train on hard seats in a cabin full of smoke. None of us slept (Oh yeh Hassan 'the turkish delight' had been forced to come and travel with us) so when we got to our hostel-Harmony Guest House, we slept until 4 pm. With limited daylight-we decided that this day was dedicated to us chilling out, which involved us watching DVD's (Bruno and slumdog millionaire).




Pingyao is a very old village, enclosed within city walls. Everything is very traditional there with old buildings, cobbled roads and architecture that hasn't been touched. All is took was one walk around and that was pretty much everything seen. Luckily, there was an underground castle nearby so we decided to visit that. We got up late again the next day but we had enough time to go and see the castle. We booked a car through Jackie-the owner of the guest house and made the trip out.



It was recommended to take a guide to the underground castle because there were tunnels leading everywhere, so it was so easy to get lost. However there were only a handful of tunnels that we could visit because if they tried to preserve the other tunnels, they may collapse and obviosuly no more tunnels. The tunnel system was for protection against enemies and there were three floors underground in which they used to play their game Hide and Seek. There were seperate rooms for soldiers, royal family and prisoners, however when there was no war, these rooms would be used for food storage.

Pingyao Photo Link:

http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2760241011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/