It was great being in Pingyao, China today because not only is it spectacularly beautiful:
But I am also quite famous!
All my fans want to have their picture with me!
The food’s tempting too. I briefly consider ordering the Manual cat ears but finally decided that I’m more of an Automatic cat ears sort of lady.
HOB suggested we order Cold wrist Joe, but all the Joes in my life have Hot wrists.
Instead, we walked outside of the town and found a bunch of people huddled around a woman dispensing soup in to plastic bags wrapped around bowls. We ordered two and ate them from tiny picnic tables along with curious kids. The soup was tasty: a gelatinous savory broth with soft tofu stirred in, topped with a pesto-like puree and peanuts.
Looking forward to another full day in Pingyao tomorrow, looking at Ming dynasty temples. And maybe we’ll go back and try the Manual cat ears.
How we got to Pingyao: train from Beijing.
Where we slept: Pingyao Jiaxin Guesthouse. Price: 7.50€ for a double. Recommended: yes.
Picnic at the Cathedral 
You are adventurous to be visiting China as independent tourists. Even after a tour 4 years ago I don’t think I’d try it on my own. I too loved the translations when there. And sorry to tell you, they all want to be photographed with non-Asians, especially with blondes!
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The infrastructure here is so advanced that it is not difficult to get around on our own. I had to scale back our itinerary though, because there’s too much I want to see in a huge country…..
What do you mean, I am not the only Western celebrity? I don’t believe it!
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Let us know if the manual cat ears were tasty. 🙂
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A little fuzzy for my taste.
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Fantastic as always 😊 Have a great time – I’m looking forward to hearing all about it
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Thanks! We are having a super time, especially with all the wonderful art and architecture. HOB and I did a lot of studying before we left so we would understand what we were looking at.
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I always found people in China very helpful, if you can communicate. And yes, welcome to the club of people who are famous in China. Its not very exclusive, I’m afraid, but it feels nice to be in it.
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I can’t speak any Chinese but my sister in law wrote some phrases down for me that I knew we would need. I have them on cards and I’ve been pointing to them and that seems to work fine—people are quite helpful here and patient with our shocking levels of incompetence in basic matters (well, except for the lady in the train ticket office in Beijing who shouted at me….)
HOB was famous in Turkey, while I was ignored. Now I’m the famous one and he’s just my arm candy.
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Wow – you are adventurous! I always thought it would be impossible to get around (read directional signs, street signs, ticket machines, train schedules, etc) because everything is in Chinese. No? How did you find your accommodations? Or did you just figure it out when you got there? So many questions….
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Well we’ve been visiting places where plenty of tourists go, so there is directional signage in English, including all the stuff on the subway. The real problem is the subways are so enormous that you need to know what exit to get out of, or you end up blocks away from your destination.
In order to get visas we had to provide documentation for all of our accommodation in advance, so I used Booking.com and submitted the booking confirmations along with our application.
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How nice that I ‘know’ someone famous! I shall be dining out on this…
I bet you two did a load of preparation for this trip to make it all work and so glad that you are enjoying it so much.
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I just wish if I was going to be people’s first foreigner that I was looking a little bit less food stained and scrappy.
We did do a lot of studying though of course, as usual, we are in a shocking state of ignorance.
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But without all the preparation and study you could not realise how much more there was to know once you were there….
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Intrepid as usual! Looks like you chose your destinations carefully. I’m glad to hear that Americans are still popular there—I would have wondered.
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I think the Chinese, like us, can tell the difference between a government and the people…..but more on that later lest the censors come down on me even harder.
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Fantastic start! Impressed with the manual cat ears as well as your instant stardom. Rock on!
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It’s going to be so dreary, going back to my life as a non-celebrity.
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Very curious about 猫耳 – cat ears!!
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猫耳—looks extra cute in Japanese!
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The first restaurant my wife and I encountered in a small Beijing neighborhood specialized in different cuts of donkey meat. Didn’t see any cat ears, alas.
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Did you try the donkey?
It is possible that we had some since most of the time we had no idea what we were eating….
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Donkey is delicious a real Northern delicacy! As for the hilarious translations…. I tend to think the same must apply for those westerners who get Chinese tattoos
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Oh for sure—-I know a lot of people with tattoos in languages they can’t read. They’re all like “this is the Japanese symbol for Eternal Harmony” and I’m thinking it probably says “I am a Westerner with smelly socks”.
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ha…!
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I like them too
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🙂
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The soup sounds DELISH 😍
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Yeah, it really was, plus the texture was interesting—quite silky.
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