A one-day tour of the ancient city Laoqianfeng, the only one in China to be listed as a World Heritage Site

While Lijiang's bar street lights up with neon lights and Dali's Erhai Lake is crowded with people checking in, Pingyao is still like a sleeping turtle, with 2,800-year-old patterns engraved on its carapace, crawling in the folds of the Loess Plateau.

This is also my second time to visit Pingyao Ancient City, and it happened to be the Spring Festival. Many people say that commercialization here is becoming more and more serious, and I don’t deny this. But as I walked along slowly, I found that apart from the Trip Moments and Yiwu small commodities everywhere, Pingyao is still Pingyao.

Among the four ancient cities in China, only Pingyao is listed as a World Heritage Site as a whole, and the integrity of its city walls surpasses that of other ancient cities. The "old money style" here does not rely on filters. The sound of beads in the Shanxi merchants' banks, the knife marks on the walls of the escort agencies, and the crops drying in the courtyards are its real luxuries.

✨A wild road away from the crowds
Get up early in the morning to visit the ancient city. The deserted streets and alleys restore the desolate aesthetics of the ancient city. Mist rises from the cracks between the blue bricks, and contrasts with the gray walls and blue tiles, creating a movie-like feeling. The entire ancient city is symmetrically arranged with the prosperous South Street as the central axis. It consists of four main streets, eight small streets, and seventy-two narrow alleys. The lively atmosphere of this ancient city can be found near the indigenous alleys far away from the main street.

✨Its soul is hidden in the soil
The Pingyao beef sold on street carts is wrapped in oil paper and served with the sweet and sour flavor of sea buckthorn juice; the oat noodle soup is dipped in ten-year-old vinegar, which Shanxi people call "carbohydrate nuclear bomb". Avoid the Internet celebrity restaurant and go back to the old Wan Tu restaurant. I had a serving of Wan Tu and a serving of beggar's chicken and was very satisfied with the meal.

✨Pingyao’s “commercialization” is a transparent shell
What is surging under the shell is the coolness of 30 billion silver coins in the escort agency's cellar, the fragments of Qing Dynasty account books in the second-hand shop next to the Confucian Temple, and the wild history of Rishengchang occasionally told by the tour guide in Shanxi dialect. The word "slow" here is a verb: so slow that you can hear the sigh of copper coins in the cracks of the bricks, so slow that a bowl of knife-cut noodles can be eaten as the sun sets. The best feeling I got from visiting Pingyao for the second time is that I don’t need any strategy, I just need a heart that wants to slow down.

✉️Other suggestions:
After visiting the ancient city, you can also go to Shuanglin Temple + Zhenguo Temple to check in the world cultural heritage of one city and two temples!
Tickets: Full price ticket is 125 yuan, but if you only enter the ancient city and do not visit small attractions, you do not need a ticket
Opening hours: 8:00-19:00

Post by AmeliaCunningham34 | Mar 25, 2025