Visiting the houses of Pingyao. As we’d already said in our article on the friendships we’d had in China, Pingyao is the ideal place to find yourself and meet new people. At the same time, we obviously visited a lot of the traditional houses of Pingyao that are included in the 3 day ticket, as well as many others that were interesting to see, even though they didn’t have their own history and background.

Our guesthouse was one of many on the South Street that combined the chance to stay in a centuries-old house with modern comforts and, in many cases, restaurants that serve traditional Chinese food.

Since we saw so many buildings, and don’t want to bore you with all the little details, we will tell you that the houses are generally larger than they first appear to be and have an endless number of rooms, hallways, patios and various intriguing historical features. We’ll therefore talk about the most breathtaking houses in detail, and only mention the rest that we saw in passing.

The China Armed Escort Company Museum was one of the buildings we liked the most. Noah particularly liked being able to have a go at shooting a bow and arrow with Fábio. They ended up being pretty good at it in the end 🙂

Its rear courtyard contained a sort of gym of the time. It had weights and everything!

The China Rare Newspaper Museum housed a wide variety of newspapers from different periods and many things on Mao Zedong and his Red Book.

The Xie Tong Qing Draft Bank was another one of the houses of Pingyao we enjoyed the most. It was very ornate and had many photographs from the time.

Behind one of the numerous buildings that made up the house was a path which led to the bank’s basement. The general idea for this room was to make sure the gold, silver and precious metal reserves were even more secure.

At the Tianxijiang Museum there was a huge collection of furniture, calligraphy, paintings and embroidery.

Wei Sheng Chang Museum

Chinese Chamber of Commerce Museum

The First Armed Escort in North China, where you’ll find all sorts of weapons and carriages and even a counting house.

The Hui Wu Lin Museum, where you can see the layout of a typical house: the children slept in one area, the masters of the house in another and nearby, albeit literally on a lower level, the servants.

The House of Traditional Martial Arts

The Wei Tau Hou Museum occupies roughly 1300m² of space.

Ri Sheng Chang is one of Pingyao’s most typical houses. I didn’t have much time here though, since there was a group of about 70 women who filled every corner of the house.

This made it impossible to look at anything in any particular detail… So I visited the house in the opposite way, so I had some good chances to see some empty spots 🙂 🙂

We loved the houses of Pingyao and the city itself. We might not have managed to see everything there, but taking it slow in a city from the Middle Ages wasn’t bad either. It reminded us that it wasn’t that long ago that life was much more peaceful and, if you get up really early … not full of tourists. 🙂

Next stop: Xi’an!