14 Days in Pingyao

In through the turtle-head gate, a first dusk stretch of rampart, the south-gate projection show, and a courtyard inn with a heated-brick bed — the fortnight's anchor.

1. pingyao city walls

Sunrise on the full 6.4-kilometre circuit — 3,000 battlements, 72 watchtowers, and the turtle's four paw-gates of the east and west — before the tour groups wake.

1. pingyao city walls

The 18.5-metre market tower as pivot — saltpetre-cured beef counters, buckwheat wanto stands, vinegar cellars and polished-lacquer shops strung along the four great streets.

1. pingyao market tower

Court reenactment before noon, then the magistrates' quarters, granaries, prison courts and the back garden — the country's finest-preserved county office compound, and it takes a day.

1. pingyao county yamen

Morning light in the 1163 Confucian hall, the three-shrines-in-one city-god compound after lunch, and stele rubbings to shop for in the evening lanes.

1. pingyao confucian temple
2. pingyao city god temple

A first, patient pass through the first draft bank of 1823 — its coded poem-phrases, clerks' desks and some-35-city branch map — leaving the clerks' arithmetic for a second visit.

1. pingyao rishengchang museum

The tunnel cellars of the Xieqingqing vault, then the escort museum's guarded-silver roads — the muscle that kept the codes safe.

1. pingyao xieqingqing vault
2. pingyao armed escort museum

Back for the details — how a remittance cipher was written, checked and burned — then the evening 90-minute walk-through of Impression Pingyao.

1. pingyao rishengchang museum

A full morning six kilometres southwest among the 2,052 painted clay figures — the temple that shares the World Heritage listing — and a slow lane afternoon back in town.

1. pingyao shuanglin temple

Northeast to the 963 Wanfo hall first, then the Tang-rooted Daoist halls of Qingxu within the walls; two temples, two faiths, one evening of rooflines.

1. pingyao zhenguo temple
2. pingyao qingxu temple

A workshop day — polishing a lacquer tray under a master's eye, paper-cut scissors, and dyed-cloth counters; the forts of a trading city were also its craft halls.

1. pingyao market tower

An honest neighbouring-county day, forty minutes west — the walled village of Zhangbi above kilometres of ancient tunnel galleries, its temple terraces facing the loess — back to the walls by dusk.

1. pingyao zhangbi fortress

Another honest neighbour day, an hour west into Lüliang's Xinghua village, where the Fenjiu distillery houses keep sorghum fermenting in buried earthen jars — tastings, old cellars and a lunch with the local vinegar.

1. pingyao fenjiu village

A last dawn circuit of the ramparts, beef and lacquerware for the bag, then the high-speed station — or the old station right by the walls, for the slow train.

1. pingyao city walls