The big smoke and the city that went broke

Beijing and us didn't get off to a good start.
We arrived after an overnight train ride from Xi'an and were immediately hit with a huge rise in the price of accommodation. It cost us heaps more for two dorm beds in the capital than it had for private rooms anywhere else. We were also hit hard by the climate. We were used to the heat, but the combination of that with the heavy city smog was suffocating. (First pic is looking across Tiananmen Sqare to Chairman Mao's Mausoleum).

We had to get to Beijing well before our departure to Mongolia because we had to organise visas. So, with the applications in, we took to the chance to escape from the city for a few days to a place called Pingyao (second and third pics).

Pingyao is a night's train ride from Beijing, but a world away. It is famous for its intact city wall and unrivalled Ming and Qing Dynasty architecture.

As with the previous blog entry, I'm suffering from a total lack of memory when it comes to the historical dates relevant to the places we visited and can't be bothered with research, thus the following explanation will be very vague.

Basically, the reason Pingyao is so unique is that during the Ming Dynasty (between 1368 and 1644) it was a booming financial centre, with the nation's earliest banks.

Then the place went broke. How, I can't remember, but the important thing is, at the time when people in other towns were knocking down their Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings to replace them with new structures, the residents in Pingyao couldn't afford to.

So, after two days of experiencing the history and chalm of Pingyao, we hopped on the train for a very interesting (read crowded and smoky) trip back to Beijing.

Beijing take two was a definite improvement on the first installment, rain had seemed to wash some of the smog away and we spent our days seeing the sights, or, in some cases, life-size pictures of the sights, hanging in front of buildings that were being renovated or just scrubbed up so as to be sparking clean ready for the Beijing Olympics. The Forbidden City was grand and the Peking Duck was great, but when the time came to hop on the train to Mongolia, we were well and truly ready to go.