7 Days in Pingyao

Arrive by the turtle-head gate, climb the 6.4-kilometre rampart late in the day to read the plan — four great streets, eight lesser, 72 lanes — and end on the south-gate projection show; a courtyard inn with a heated-brick bed is the week's base.

1. pingyao city walls

Under the 18.5-metre market tower the morning is for shopfronts and old brands — beef, buckwheat wanto, lacquerware counters — and the afternoon for the Xieqingqing vault's tunnel cellars.

1. pingyao market tower
2. pingyao xieqingqing vault

A full yamen day — the court reenactment before noon, then the magistrates' quarters, the granaries and the garden at the back, the finest-preserved county office complex in the country.

1. pingyao county yamen

The Confucian hall of 1163 in the morning light, the three-shrines-in-one city-god compound after lunch, and the evening for rooflines and craft shops along the lanes.

1. pingyao confucian temple
2. pingyao city god temple

A slow museum day — the Rishengchang's coded poem-phrases and its some-35-city branch map, then the guards' story of moving silver at the armed-escort museum, and the 90-minute Impression Pingyao at night.

1. pingyao rishengchang museum
2. pingyao armed escort museum

Shuanglin's 2,052 painted clay figures six kilometres southwest, Zhenguo's 963 Wanfo hall twelve kilometres northeast — the two outposts that share the World Heritage listing with the city itself.

1. pingyao shuanglin temple
2. pingyao zhenguo temple

An honestly labelled neighbouring-county day, forty minutes west into Jiexiu — the Zhangbi walled village sits above kilometres of ancient tunnel galleries, with temple terraces facing the loess — then back for the evening train.

1. pingyao zhangbi fortress