The guardian in Pingyao
First published in 2014
Pingyao is a small village in Shanxi that was able to avoid the typical fate of tearing down all the old buildings, substitute them with a faceless industrial type of "modern" buildings, just to realize some 10 years later that the old style was nice - ending up in demolishing the modern buildings and rebuilding the downtown area in the old style.
This is the key reason that Pingyao is high on the list of must-visit-places for local tourists. There are some foreigners too, but the relation is maybe 1:50 or even less.
Due to the size of the village, the city wall is not as impressive as the one in Xi'An or other places. But you can get some pretty nice insights into the village and even in some backyards. When we were there, the weather wasn't really nice with a lot of dust (or smog) in the air. But there was this single statue of a guard and I was able to position myself in a way that the sun (or whatever was able to cut through the dust) was right behind the top of his lance.
