China, Pingyao: Rescuing a Kitten in the Ancient City

The painting at the start of this neighbourhood was quite unique
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The nightmare of all train journeys, that's a good way to describe the first part of our trip from Xi'an to Pingyao. We had to purchase hard seat tickets for the 9-hour trip, as all of the hard-sleeper and soft-sleeper tickets had sold out, even though we purchased our tickets four days in advance, one day after the tickets were released for sale. In China, train tickets don't go on sale more than five days in advance.

A hard seat roughly translates to a 3rd class seat, or what we like to call it, "cattle class". The carriage was boiling hot when we boarded since there was no air conditioning or fans anywhere to be found. That was the least of our worries, though; the carriage we were scheduled to sit in was full with over 100 people, most of them standing in the aisles and at the end of the carriage, due to the seats being crammed full with more people than there were seats allocated. Many people were smoking and there were many people who needed to take a shower. To top this off, every person in the carriage seemed to have at least four or five bags with them, carrying who knows what, and most of the bags were quite large and littering the aisle and floor; the overhead shelves were completely full as well. The reason there were so many people on the train was because train companies in China continued to sell seats even when all of the assigned seats are gone. People were allocated standing tickets and that meant that the train aisles were usually very full in the hard seat carriages.

We walked into the courtyard and came upon three enormous cows with huge udders that looked ready to burst

Pingyao is an ancient and well preserved town in China where the buildings have all been built in the traditional Imperial way
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An immediate unpleasant smell (mostly from the people who need to take showers) wafted through our nostrils and, by the time we had moved people out of our allocated seats - you should have seen us take control when we whipped out our Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook to the marked page that told us how to say "that's my seat" - we were sweaty and very uncomfortable. After having navigated through the crowd to get to our seat, with our large backpacks and smaller daypacks, of which there was no room to put them, we finally were seated on a hard, wooden bench with three or four other people next to each of us. We had seats on benches across from each other, so we didn't even get to sit next to each other.

This little girl was eating her dinner when we passed her mother's food stand on the side of the road in Pingyao
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Everything that led up to that point was enough to blow a fuse. It was Kyle that took action first; he decided to go speak to one of the train guards to see if it would be possible to upgrade from the hard seats to sleeper seats. We had heard about upgrading from one of the girls who worked in Xiangzimen Youth Hostel in Xi'an, where we had stayed for the past five days. At first, we didn't think we would need to upgrade since we had "allocated seats", but she kept saying that we should try to upgrade when we got on the train. She was more right than anyone who has ever been right before!

These Pingyao noodles were very simple and qutie tasty
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There was absolutely no way that we could have gone to see one of the train guards and have made it back through the crowd to our seats without bursting thousands of blood vessels due to stress, so Kyle suggested that we take our bags with us and try to upgrade, with the hopes that we would not have to return to "hell on wheels". At first, Dan was reluctant to go because he was afraid he couldn't get out of his seat very easily. When he saw that Kyle was determined to leave the carriage and never look back, he quickly pushed his way up from standing position and started following him out of the carriage, towards the sleeper section of the train.

Most of the buildings in Pingyao had large courtyards with beautiful Chinese paintings or inscriptions on the walls
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What a horrible dilemma... all we could do to make our way through the carriage was to push and knock people out of the way. Children and both young and old adults were flying every which way, but the funny thing is that most people were trying their best to squeeze to the sides and get out of our way so we could get through the carriage. They probably heard us screaming through the window to one of the guards down the platform, asking if we could upgrade, and assumed that we were on a mission that would not fail. No doubt that some of our supporters were knocked out of the way by the big bags on our backs as we pushed through to the end of the carriage.

We rescued this little kitten from a sure death and convinced Yamen Hostel to take care of it
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When we finally made it to the end of the carriage, we were in for a shock because there was another equally full carriage awaiting us. We had to push through the crowd yet again in order to make it to the end of that carriage, so we could speak to a guard in one of the sleeper carriages. At the end of that second carriage, we were faced with another problem - crazy crowded carriage #3. You will be happy to know that the fourth carriage we came across was nice and quiet, with cabins lining one side. It was here that we would spend the next 45 minutes.

Pingyao has a 6km city wall that was built around it during the Ming Dynasty
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The guard we spoke to didn't speak any English but after several minutes we figured out that he was telling us to wait 45 minutes to see if there would be a possibility of upgrading. The train guard then told us to go back to our seats to wait, but we steadfastly refused to move and waited between the guard's cabin and toilet at the end of the carriage. The train finally arrived at the next stop to pick up more passengers and we were in luck - there were two soft-sleeper seats available.

The guard led us to a 4-berth cabin where an English couple from Bristol had already made themselves comfortable. It was not unusual to be paired up with other Westerners, as the hard-sleeper and soft-sleeper carriages normally have foreign tourists in them, but it was ironic that they were from England. Time went by very quickly when we ended up talking with Adam and Jenny for the remaining 8 hours to Pingyao. They were heading further to Datong and would be spending the night on the train, so we bid them farewell at our stop and wished them a good night's sleep.

People in China are not afraid to use the toilet wherever they see fit
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It was dark when we arrived in Pingyao and we were glad that a couple of people from Yamen Youth Hostel picked us up at the train station, as the small ancient town was not very well lit up at night. Also, we didn't have a very good map of the town, nor did we know exactly where the hostel was located. The two girls that picked us up were very friendly and talked non-stop during the ten minutes to the hostel. To get to the hostel, they led us to a taxi that reminded us of a tuk-tuk in Thailand, but it was a little bit bigger.

This little boy was even braver than the man in the last photo as he whipped his trousers down in the middle of the street to take care of business
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Once we checked into our room in Pingyao, we had a quick chat about the horrifying beginning of our train journey and we agreed to avoid hard seats at all costs for any future train travel in China. For the rest of the evening, we explored the small hostel and its four courtyards and decided that we had booked a great place. Yamen Youth Hostel was a very nice traditional Chinese building and we had fun there for the next couple of days.

On our first full day in Pingyao, we started off by heading to a ticket office where we could purchase entrance tickets to all of the ancient city's historical sights. There was a ticket office really close to our hostel, but we missed it because we were looking at some locals sitting on the other side of the road. As we walked a bit further, we came across a little kitten wandering next to a wall outside one of the town's neighbourhoods - all of the houses and neighbourhoods in Pingyao are enclosed and the roads in the town are all lined with high, windowless brick walls.

In one of the ancient buildings in Pingyao, we saw these large steam baskets and could imagine how many dumplings could be served up from them
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The kitten, who must have only been a few weeks old, looked very scared and lost, so we picked the tiny creature up and walked down the alley to see if anyone was missing their pet. After asking a couple of people in the area who clearly didn't want anything to do with it, we headed back to the hostel with the kitten. There, we requested that the hostel find a home for the animal, and they said that they would took care of it. Soon after, the kitten had a name - Mimi - and was lapping up some milk that it was provided with by one of the girls.

Most of the buildings in Pingyao are extremely old and some of them, like this one, have not been restored fully
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After our good deed, we headed back out in the ancient city to purchase our tickets. The first place we visited was the Ancient Government Building, which was a large complex of buildings with several courtyards. The decorations inside the building were quite unique at this first stop, but as we visited more and more sights in Pingyao, we saw that the layout and style of the buildings, as well as the furniture inside them, was all very similar to each other. Having said this, however, the architecture in the ancient city was completely different to what we have seen in the rest of the places in China that we have visited.

Dan was really intimidating when he put on this warrior's hat
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The next place that we visited was the Former Residence of Lei. We had to walk a couple of blocks to this house and, on the way, we found ourselves a little lost in a small walled neighbourhood off the main road, being shooed away by a frisky group of old women who we found to be quite funny. After a while, when walking around the city, all of the small roads looked the same; it was easy to get lost there. Getting lost was part of the fun, though, and we discovered that the UNESCO city was quite beautiful.

Kyle really enjoyed walking around the ancient town of Pingyao
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A majority of the people living within the old city wall were very poor and much of the old city was crumbling away into decay. Despite the poor conditions, the local people were very friendly and we had many conversations with families who were were sitting along the side of roads that we explored. The most memorable conversation was a brief one that we had with a woman who sold fresh milk. We walked into the courtyard of her house and we came upon three enormous cows with huge udders that looked ready to burst. She wasn't kidding with the "Fresh Milk" sign that was hung outside her house!

We were able to climb to the top of many buildings in Pingyao, to gain views of the town from above
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In Pingyao, there were many great souvenir shops lining two of the main roads in the centre of town and there were also many antique shops. We enjoyed looking at all of the Chinese antiques and even picked up some nice souvenirs that we found hidden in the midst of many crappy items. Besides souvenir shopping, we also visited many of the remaining Pingyao sights, including a Confucian temple, a Catholic church, a Buddhist temple named Chenghuang, a Taoist temple named Qingxuguan and many, many other traditional buildings that were all very beautiful. Even though the price for our entrance tickets was high, it was worth it, since the tickets included entrance to all of the sights in town.

The ancient streets in Pingyao were a delight to explore
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We tried some traditional food in Pingyao at a restaurant called "Xi Yu Cheng"; one of the dishes was "Pingyao noodles", a plate of wheat noodles that were shaped into rings. The noodles were quite tasty and were served with two dipping sauces, a tomato sauce and a combined soy and vinegar one. We also tried deep-fried red bean paste; the first piece or two was good but it was quite heavy and difficult to finish. At our hostel, we tried sweet and sour pork (a good dish and probably one that we tried the most during our six weeks in the country) and a plate of steamed broccoli with garlic (it was okay for the first few pieces but the plate was huge and full of broccoli and just a bit too healthy).

Many walled in neighbourhoods were positioned just off the main roads in Pingyao
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The rest of the time in Pingyao, we spent time in the hostel hanging out with the staff and playing with Mimi. We also fed her and made sure that the hostel's staff were serious about taking care of her. When the time came to bid Mimi goodbye, we had to struggle hard not to stuff her into one of our backpacks to take her with us, but we managed to avoid this in the end and said goodbye to her and to the staff at Yamen Youth Hostel.

We really enjoyed Pingyao and wish we could have had more time there, but it was time to move on to Beijing, our last stop in China. We didn't take any risks with booking our train tickets and had booked hard-sleeper seats on the first day we arrived in Pingyao. Therefore, our overnight journey to Beijing was due to be a comfortable one without the stress faced at the start of our Xi'an journey. The staff at Yamen booked a taxi for us and we headed to the train station. We had the top beds in our 6-berth cabin, but the Chinese people in our cabin were very friendly and didn't mind us sitting on the bottom bed during the waking hours. We also trotted down to the dining car to have some rice and a couple of drinks whilst working on our travel journal. Before we knew it, we were in China's capital city!