It was not the principal reason to visit Pingyao, but eating was a lot of fun .... here is a small sample
1) Pingyao Meat (one of the 2 cuts of cow meat)
2) Guanguan Noodles
3) Yam
4) Donkey
Posted new photos from the Mid-Autumn Festival trip to Pingyao. See them in the China 2008 folder.
http://iwentto.blogs.com/photos/china_2008/
A couple of interesting things....
Special Mooncakes
Mooncakes is the big thing for China during this festival. Not surprisingly in Shanxi, they also had mooncakes. The surprise was that they are not the greasy ones but these .....(male and female).
Red Lanterns
There are a lot of red lanterns in old China. In fact, one of the family compounds was the site for the famous movie "Raise the Red Lantern" by ZhangYimou. The film was shot in the Qiao Compound in Pingyao (read more in the Wiki)
(picture is not of the Qiao Compound)
Don't even have a name for this animal (HAO ??? In Chinese ).
I was too drunk to remember when they invited me to eat this. I know it is a huge crab and it's blood is blue, so it makes it an ancient animal.
You get used to a lot of strange things while living in China. For some reason, I felt like I had to take a picture of this one.
In China, kids use the pants with a big open hole at the bottom. No need to take the pants off before doing #1 or #2 and it is supposed to be more hygienic.
It was just so natural for them, at least the kid held it before the parents found a plastic bag to put underneath.
Of course, the subway packed and I was only 2 meters away. The guy next to them kept reading his phone (in photo), and the person next to me kept eating his snack.
This reminded me of a train ride over 10 years ago in Guizhou. I had stand up all night (no seat) when a kid started screaming that he wanted to pee.
Since the hallway to the bathroom was all full, there was no chance the mom could make it to the bathroom ontime and I was the lucky one the kid pee'd on. (next to my shoes)
He left a puddle next for the next 2 hours and nobody really said anything about it.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, I took my mooncakes to the largest (and most beautiful) ancient city in China.
The city walls' have an history of about 700 years. The wall and houses inside are so well preserved you feel like you are walking into a Chinese city in the 1500s with some kungfu master, as in the TV series. This is a re-enactment of the courts during the time.
PAIOHAO (early Chinese banking)
Pingyao is famous for becoming the place that an early form of banking was created. There are a lot of houses in charge of storing and transporting savings from cities to cities. Obviously, the bankers made a lot of money and had the beautiful houses to prove it.
The trip from Beijing took me 11 hours by train (overnight). It is only 480km, so a bus would take about 5 hours to Taiyuan + 1 hour to Pingyao
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