….. Ancient Ming-Qing Street, Pingyao …..
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From the website pingyao: The past is alive in Pingyao. Whereas other cities have embraced modernity often at the expense of their historical heritage, Pingyao tenaciously holds onto its past.
As dawn breaks and the morning sun bathes Pingyao’s gray city walls in warm tones, you find yourself flung back in time, as your eyes behold a Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644 A.D.) fortress in all its imposing glory. Watchtowers, cast iron cannons, intimidating wooden gates and sturdy walls render an impenetrable feel. And then the city wakes up. Narrow alleys that coil around time-honored courtyard homes fill up with its 480,000 denizens. Shops open their doors to reveal modern cashier equipment perched on antique tabletops. Bustling about are bicycles, rickshaws and scooters. Here in Pingyao, modernity lives with centuries old relics.
The old walled city is an architectural treasure trove. Civic buildings, private homes and streets are well preserved in Ming and Qing styles. Few buildings rise above two stories. Several are adorned with splendid eave roofs, intricately latticed windows, hand-painted glass lanterns and ornate wood. Such exquisite handiwork didn’t come cheap, but then again, Pingyao was China’s premier banking center during the two dynasties. Its wealthy residents were comprised of merchants and businessmen who set about constructing sprawling mansions as expertly as they built up their business and trade.
Of the many banks in Pingyao, Rishengchang Exchange Shop is the most famous. Originally established in 1643, it still has records of its earliest days in business. One reason for the city’s prosperity was its location. It lay at the heart of Shanxi Province between the central plain and the northern desert. Han Chinese merchants occupying the central plains could communicate easily with the northern tribes and set up trade links with the rest of China.
The stoic city walls also did its part to shield Pingyao from marauding enemies from the 14th to 19th centuries, allowing the city to flourish swiftly. The walls were first erected in the Zhou dynasty and last rebuilt during the Ming. After the Song army set the earthen walls on fire in AD 960, the walls were covered with bricks.
The fortifications are sophisticated – the square perimeter is 12m high and 5m thick and there are platforms every 50m with 3,000 crenels on the outer wall, 72 watchtowers, and a water drainage system reinforced with bricks at the top. The wall is surrounded by moats 3m wide and deep and six suspension bridges once fronted each city gate. You can walk all the way around the walls in 2 hours.
By the 19th century, the once dynamic town fell into provincial obscurity and the walls became a psychological prison. When modernization fever swept through China in the 1980′s, town officials laid plans to demolish the ancient city and rebuild the town to accommodate what was hoped to be a future economic boom. As the city planners dreamt of a modernized city and Pingyao’s economic revival, people on the ground struggled to rescue the ancient city.
Professor Ruan Yisan, who specialized in urban planning at Tongji University in Shanghai, worked tirelessly to make officials aware of the cultural value of Pingyao. His efforts paid off, and modernization was left outside the ancient wall. In 1986, Pingyao was declared a national historical city and protected it from demolishing. The town was flushed with funds, accelerating its conservation efforts. In 1997, Pingyao made it to the list of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, thus a silver lining finally revealed itself.
Harriet and I had something happen at this table that made our two day in this very old city of Pingyao, a very memorable one. Harriet and I were having a quiet coffee in the afternoon on the second day we were in Pingyao at this beautiful old table. The table was made from old handmade cart wheels and a hand roughed tabletop in heavy timbers. To get a coffee in China anywhere was a great rarity.
As we sat slowly drinking our coffee over time, the street was alive with milling strangers …. people were passing up and down the street. We were one of the few western looking people on the street. Everyone else had a very Asian look. They were many Chinese who came within China or they were tourists like us from another Asian country eg. Singapore, Korea, Japan.
As Harriet and I have a worldview on all people where we can accept anyone of any race or skin colour. We believe people are valuable:
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No matter who they are
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What skin colour they are
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What race they are
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What they believe in or not believe in
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What they have done or not done
This is because we have and live out of a Christian Spirituality. The focus of this Spirituality is on Community. It is a focus on people where people are valued for who they are, not for what they have achieved. This Christian Spirituality draws a clear distinction between that taught by Jesus Christ as the‘Kingdom of God’ and the later ‘Kingdom of Christianity’ The change only came in the 4th Century A.D.
This Kingdom of God approach focusses on seeing people how God sees them and is based on an acceptance of a new identity that we are accepted for who we are and not what we do (Identity vs. Performance).
As we sat drinking our coffee, I would often catch peoples eyes and really say non-verbally that that they had a valuable identity and I valued them for that. Complete strangers would catch my eye and smile back at me. It became a whole process of interaction on this busy very old street from the 14th Century for probably half an hour. Strangers would often stop and look at us drinking coffee at this interesting table. They would often take photographs of us.
Then something happened which made this a very memorable time for us. Three Asian women stopped to take photographs of us and they were gesticulating with outstretched arms among themselves and then towards us. I spontaneously indicated with my hand for one of them to come up and sit on the seat with us so they could get a photo of us at the table. One of the woman came up beside me and I put my arm around her shoulder. The other woman avidly took several photographs of us. This meeting was spontaneous and significant. Had we met before?
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….. A Rickshaw Man available for hire along the wall ….
enlargement with the camera …..
….. you can see that a roof is initially made
by:
- covering in small timber logs to 100 mm in thickness
- covering the roof over the small timber logs in a finely woven bamboo matting
- a 100 mm layer of mud/clay is laid over the matting
- glazed tiles are laid in the clay as an inverted (inturned) and overlapped length of tiles
- Then a layer of glazed tiles are laid in the clay as an upturned and overlapped length of tiles
From this website:http://www.chinatravelcompass.com/pingyao/tours/PYCT_6.html
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Chang Yi Feng Restaurant ….. The First Night we there ….
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The Prison, Pingyao
The prison covers an area of 1,700 square metres. The existing rooms were for minor offences, and were in use until the 1960s, and are the only existing prison cells from the Qing Dynasty.
