Pingyao Ancient City
About Pingyao Ancient City
Pingyao, China
ADD TO LIST
WRITE REVIEW
During the Qing Dynasty, Pingyao was the center of the nation’s banking industry, with over 50% of the country’s piaohao —an early form of bank—headquartered within Pingyao’s ancient walls. These institutions assisted merchants to remit money to cities all over China as well as to neighboring countries. The first and most influential of these draft banks was Rishengchang, and this piaohao has been converted to a museum which demonstrates how these early banking institutions operated.
Pingyao was first established some 2700 years ago, during the reign of King Xuan (827 – 782 BC) of the Western Zhou Dynasty, when General Yin Jipu stationed troops here to prevent an invasion by Xiongnu barbarians. The original walls were made of tamped dirt and were located to the northeast of the present location. Originally called Pingtao, the city changed its name to Pingyao in 424. The current wall—faced with bricks and stone—was started in 1370, making it over 600 years old.
It is often said that the city wall is shaped like a tortoise—a traditional Chinese symbol of longevity—with the south gate and north gate representing the head and tail respectively. (The careful positioning of two wells, representing eyes, helps to distinguish the south gate as the head.) The east and west walls each have two additional gates, representing the tortoise’s feet. A series of 72 watchtowers is distributed around the wall, and a now-dry moat encircles the entire city. At 10 - 12 meters high and 3 – 6 meters wide, this is a very major wall indeed, much larger than those normally seen around walled cities in China or Europe . One can still walk the 6 km long road atop the ramparts, with the outward-facing parapets punctuated by 3,000 crenulations, or openings for shooting. If nothing else, a short visit to the top of the wall provides scenic views over the encircled city and its thousands of traditional rooftops, as well as of the neighboring countryside.
Pingyao was laid out according to traditional Han Chinese town planning standards. Four main streets, eight narrower streets, and 72 lanes form a neat city grid. Along these streets and lanes are nearly 4,000 Ming and Qing Dynasty structures, many of them traditional Chinese siheyuan courtyard dwellings, as well as shops, restaurants, temples, and government offices. These residences and shops are still very much in use, and tourists wandering the local streets and lanes will inevitably come across local residents shopping for vegetables, hanging their laundry, and getting a haircut. One distinguishing feature of Ancient Pingyao is that automobiles are generally not permitted within the walls of the city, with the result that it is very much a pedestrian city, much as it has been for hundreds of years.
Rishengchang Exchange House
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shanxi merchants developed extensive trade routes throughout China and overseas, with Pingyao at the center of this trade. In those days, traders paid for their goods with silver coins, and in those dangerous times it was unsafe for a merchant to carry large sums in silver from one city to another.
In 1823 the first piaohao was established to deal with this problem. Alternatively translated as “exchange house,” “draft bank,” and “remittance shop,” these piaohao provided remittance services, accepted deposits, and made loans. Named Rishengchang, or “Sunrise Prosperity,” this first exchange house established branches in different cities in China and abroad and used bank drafts to move money from city to city. Thus a merchant who wanted to remit money would pay in one city and receive a bank draft which could be converted back to silver in another city. Competing merchants soon set up competing piaohao networks, and Pingyao found itself the location of the headquarters of over half of China’s piaohao , the predecessors to modern banks. For this reason, West Street in Pingyao and the neighboring area has been dubbed “ China ’s original Wall Street.”
The original head office of the Rishengchang Exchange Shop was restored and converted to a museum in 1995. This bank takes the form of a series of rooms built around several courtyards. At the front of the compound is a shop front with counters at which cashiers issued and received bank drafts. These drafts were written in code, and a text showing how the code worked hangs in this banking hall. Other rooms in the facility include those for accounting, correspondence, and accommodating visiting managers and important clients. Rishengchang had a total of 43 branches located in key Chinese cities as well as in Japan , Singapore , and Russia . Altogether some 22 piaohao were headquartered in Pingyao, and they oversaw a network of 404 branches, including in such far-flung locations as India , Lhasa , and Urumqi .
Rishengchang was also a pioneer in business management, particularly in the concept of separating shareholding from management. In short, those who invested in Rishengchang could not work at the firm and those who worked there were not permitted to become shareholders.
Rishengchang survived for 108 years before collapsing in 1932. The decline of the exchange house industry was due in part to the arrival of commercial banks in China together with major losses sustained when loans to the Qing Dynasty government were not repaid.
A number of other piaohao based in Pingyao have been restored and opened to tourists, including the Rixinzhong Draft Bank just next door to Rishengchang.
County Government Office ( Yamen )
Pingyao has been a county seat ever since the establishment of the prefecture-county system in the Qin Dynasty, and the city has a well preserved yamen , or county government office, a complex which houses the home and office of the magistrate sent to act as mayor, judge, and senior official. This yamen consists of an archway, ceremonial gate, various offices, a prison (including a collection of ancient handcuffs and chains used to secure prisoners), a court, meeting rooms, a residential area, and a garden. This yamen compound was built in 1346, during the Yuan Dynasty, but only one building remains from the Yuan period, the rest having been built during the Ming Dynasty. There are altogether 300 rooms in the complex.
Of particular interest is the Tower of the Fox Immortal, a 700-year-old tower near the back of the compound designed for the magistrate to eat downstairs and pray upstairs. Nearby is a traditional Chinese garden where the magistrate raised fish and birds and the Cuohou Temple , built in honor of Xiao He, who rose from humble origins to become Prime Minister and who brought peace and stability to the country. As a result, he is held out as the model of an ideal official for later generations of officials. A nearby Land God Temple features frescoes over 400 years old. Note also the low-ceiling of the passageway under the opera stage, which is designed to force those passing through to bow to the Land God. Interestingly, the county government continued to operate from this location until 1997, when it was moved to new facilities outside the city walls.
Temple of the City God
While the yamen ruled the “yang” of the human world, the Temple of the City God (“Chenghuang Miao”) ruled the “yin” of the spiritual world. These two sites were situated so as to balance each other, with both on the same street and placed equidistant from Qing-Ming Street ( South Street ), with the yamen to the west and the Temple of the City God to the east.
Visitors enter the temple, which consists of several courtyards and halls, through a magnificent three-gate wood archway, with an old stone block used for mounting horses still standing before the archway. The main hall of the Temple is still very much in its original state and is clearly still in regular use. Inside are sculptures of two children, one a good boy (beaming, standing next to a kindly-looking gentlemen indicating approval) and the other a bad boy, standing next to a ghastly-looking monster. Elsewhere in the Temple visitors will also see a re-creation of heaven and hell, with every manner of torture shown in hell, from being cut to bits to being boiled to death, with happy families painted on the walls of heaven above. The “good versus bad” theme continues with a painting of Chenghuang in the clouds, looking down on good people on the right (fixing a road, showing care to the elderly, etc.) and bad people on the left (thieves and other troublemakers). Unlike most City God temples, this one honors not just the City God but also the God of Wealth and the Kitchen God. The Temple of the City God was originally built in the Northern Song Dynasty (960 – 1227) and has undergone two major renovations due to fire in 1544 and 1859.
Ming-Qing Street
This street, named for the Ming and Qing Dynasties, has been the main commercial avenue in Pingyao for centuries. Hundreds of shops line this busy street, most of them built in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Also called Nanda Jie, or South Street , Ming-Qing Street houses many courtyard houses—one-storey compounds with rooms built around a series of courtyards—and a number of the main tourist sites. Today, many traditional-style shops line the street and sell food, snacks, specialties, paintings, furniture, calligraphy, and souvenirs. Also on this street is the City Tower , at 18.5 meters it is the tallest structure in the city.
There are many other sights to see in Pingyao, including the Confucius Temple , the Qingwu Temple (a Taoist temple and home of the Pingyao Museum), the Tongxinggong Armed Escort Company Museum , and the restored residence of Lei Lutai, one of the founders of the Rishengchang Exchange House. In addition, Pingyau’s streets and lanes provide a great place to explore and to see how local residents of this historical city go about their lives day-to-day. The modern city of Pingyao has been built just to the north of the ancient walled city; it is a typical mid-sized Chinese city with a population of about 500,000.
There is no charge to visit Pingyao Ancient City , and one simply enters through the various city gates which have been admitting visitors for centuries. However, most of the key tourist sites in Pingyao—including the yamen , the Rishengchang Exchange Shop, and the Temple of the City God—require a ticket to enter, and one joint ticket allows visitors to enter all of the key tourist sights. Each year in mid-September Pingyao hosts to the China Pingyao International Photography Festival, which attracts photographers from all over the world to display their works here.
There are many hotels, guesthouses, and restaurants within Pingyao Ancient City , and many visitors consider their stay in a Qing Dynasty era hotel a highlight of their trip to central China . Pingyao’s World Heritage Site designation is shared with Zhenguo Temple and Shuanglin Temple , two nearby 1000+ - year old Buddhist temples noted for their spectacular carvings and paintings. Both are well worth a visit. Visitors to Pingyao often also stay an extra day or two to visit some of the well-preserved family residential compounds which are in the area, the most notable being the family compounds of the Wang, Chang, Qiao, and Qu clans.
Payment Accepted:
Getting there:
Pingyao is located 94 km south of Taiyuan , the capital city of Shanxi . The city can be reached by bus from Taiyuan ’s Jiannan Bus Station and from Xi’an , as well as from other cities. Pingyao is also served by train from Taiyuan (about two hours) and numerous other cities. There is no airport in Pingyao.
[Flag as duplicate]
First To Review:
Nov 21, 2009
Pingyao is the favorite tourist destination among foreign visitors to Shanxi Province, and it is not hard to see why. The magnificent city walls--some 600 years old, 6 km long, and with 72 watch towers--surround a city of 40,000 people who still live in buildings why primarily date from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Visiting Pingyao is really like stepping back into history.
Hotels Near Pingyao Ancient City
Related Links
Travel insurance from Worldnomads.com
