平遥
Pingyao
China's best-preserved walled city — a Ming Dynasty time capsule where bank vaults, courtyards, and lantern-lit lanes survive unchanged.
平遥
China's best-preserved walled city — a Ming Dynasty time capsule where bank vaults, courtyards, and lantern-lit lanes survive unchanged.
Pingyao is the closest you can get to walking through Ming Dynasty China. Its 6km-long city wall, built in 1370, encloses an entire old city of courtyard houses, Confucian temples, and China's first bank — the Rishengchang Exchange, founded in 1823. At night, red lanterns hang from every eave and the streets empty of cars, giving the city a haunting, timeless quality. Pingyao was once the financial center of Qing China, and its restored merchant mansions tell the story of the Shanxi merchants who built fortunes on salt, tea, and banking before the system collapsed in 1911.
