5 Days in Yuncheng

The salt lake spread along the city's southern edge covers about 132 km2 and has been worked for some 4,600 years — the dense brine holds a swimmer up the way the Dead Sea does. The Tang-dynasty Salt-Pool God Temple on the shore records the trade that built this city.

1. yuncheng salt lake
2. yuncheng chishen temple

South of town, the ancestral temple to general Guan Yu — founded in 589, rebuilt after a 1702 fire — is the largest of its kind, and the family temple at nearby Changping village, where Guan Yu was born, makes a natural pair for the day.

1. yuncheng haizhou guandi temple
2. yuncheng changping guandi ancestral temple

About two hours southeast to Ruicheng for the Yuan-dynasty Taoist monastery whose murals cover more than 1,000 m2, the Procession of Immortals in the main hall alone running almost 100 m. The whole complex was moved some 25 km uphill in 1959-1964, ahead of the Sanmenxia reservoir.

1. yuncheng yongle palace

An hour southwest to Yongji, where the rebuilt Guanque Tower rises 73.9 m above the river plain — Wang Zhihuan's climb-above poem is cut at its base — the Pujin Ford displays four giant iron oxen cast in 724 to anchor an old pontoon bridge, and the Pujiu Temple keeps the Yingying echo pagoda of the play Romance of the Western Chamber.

1. yuncheng guanque tower
2. yuncheng pujin iron oxen
3. yuncheng pujiu temple

North to Wanrong county, where the Feiyun Tower of the Dongyue temple is a fully timbered tower about 23 m tall in its Ming-built, Qing-repaired form (the present shape fixed by the 1746 restoration), and the Li family courtyard — a merchant fortune begun in the Daoguang era of the 1820s — mixes Shanxi courtyards with a European-style brick facade. Back to the city for a market dinner and the HSR.

1. yuncheng feiyun tower
2. yuncheng lijia courtyard
3. yuncheng city markets