Taiyuan City Tour(Pingyao)

 Taiyuan is the capital of Shanxi Province, which is located on the eastern part of the Loess Plateau of North China, with Shaaxi Province to the west and Hebei Province to the east, very close to Beijing and Xian.

Below are our suggested itineraries for your reference based on your travel time inTaiyuan City  Shanxi

1.If you have one day free in Taiyuan ,we suggest:

Essential Shanxi:  Shanxi airport transfers, visit The Pingyao Ancient City and The Shuanglin Temple.

Historic Shanxi :  Shanxi airport transfers, Jinci Temple and Shanxi Museum.

2.If you have two days free  in Taiyuan,we suggest:

 Shanxi Classic (2 Days):  Jinci Temple, Qiao Courtyard and The Pingyao Ancient City.

Merchant Culture (2 Days):  Qiao Courtyard, The Pingyao Ancient City and Wang Courtyard.

If all the Taiyuan private day tours on this page are not what you are expecting, please contact us to plan a tailor-made Taiyuan day tour. about the quotation ,Pls send us email angelleexin@yahoo.com

Pingyao Ancient City

 Pingyao Ancient City

Pingyao Ancient City is 110 kilometers south of Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province and is an outstanding example of a Chinese Han nationality city during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, retaining all features of such periods. Pingyao Ancient City is the only ancient city in China completely reserved as it was built hundreds of years without any modern buildings, but it only consists of the narrow street with Chinese shops in old style by each side. The city wall is 12 meters tall with an average width of 5 meters , which is also regarded as the oldest and best preserved wall in China. 

 Jinci Temple

Jinci Temple

The Jinci Temle, located 25 kilometers southwest from downtown Taiyuan, is one of the national key relics. It is a scenic spot composed of architecture, sculptures and traditional landscapes. It is known for the 43 statues standing inside and the most famous statues are the 30 clay figures of young maids-in-waiting painted with colorful costumes and retained perfectly.The scenery presents an excellent combination of antiquity with natural beauty.

Qiao Courtyard

 Qiao Courtyard

The Qiao Family Courtyard lies in the beautiful and richly endowed Jinzhong basin of Shanxi. It is greatly admired as a very special artistic treasure by both common people and architects. It is also one of the ten best tourist spots in the Shanxi Province.

The Qiao Family Courtyard was built during the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1711-99) in the Qing Dynasty, and occupied 8,724.8 square meters of land, consisting of 6 large yards and 20 small yards with 313 houses in total. It was repaired and rebuilt many times during the reigns of emperors Tongzhi and Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty and at the beginning of the People’s Republic of China (1911-1949). It was an old Chinese residential courtyard that thrived for over two centuries. When you look down at the overall yard above ground, it looks just like "喜喜" (The Chinese characters mean double happiness）.

Entering into the gate of the courtyard, first you will see an 80-meter-long straight stone pavement that divides 6 courtyards into a northern and southern row. There are slope protections between the pavements and nearby walls. The Qiao family's ancestral temple is at the end of the western side, which directly faces the gate. There are 4 main buildings and 6 other structures, such as a gate pavilion and the Geng and Tiao pavilions. The sidewalks on the roof of every yard are connected to allow for patrol.

Viewed from outside, the residency is serious and grand with long yards; viewed from inside, it is splendid and orderly reflecting the residential style of big families in feudal society in North China.

The courtyard's three sides face the street, while the courtyard itself is completely surrounded by a 10-meter-high sealed water-milled brick wall. Yards and houses are linked with other yards and houses while the sidewalks above row upon row of roofs - such as the Xuanshan, Xieshan, Yingshan, Juanpeng, and Horizon roofs -- link up the battlements.

Yards contain smaller yards as well as gardens. The doors, windows, eaves, stone stairs, quadrangular railings, three or five rows in depth and three yards though in a line are all beautiful shaped. You can see brick carvings everywhere in the yards: backbone carving, wall carving, and railing carving. All of which are based on figures, allusions, flowers and plants, birds, beast, chess, and painting and calligraphy. The carving designs are so exquisite and their workmanship, so fine, fully showing the special style of residential building in the Qing Dynasty.

In addition, four tablets still hanging in the yard are quite noticeable. They were separately bestowed from Li Hongzhang (A Chinese general who ended several major rebellions, and a leading statesman of the late Qing Empire), the Empress Dowager Cixi (A powerful and charismatic figure who was the de facto ruler of the Qing Dynasty, ruling over China for most of the period from 1861 to her death in 1908), Fu Shan, and villages in Ji County.

In 1990, this ancient mansion gained its fame home and abroad due to the movie Raise the Red Lantern by the director Zhang Yimou. After the movie finished, the drama production team left behind several hundred red lanterns. Since then, these lanterns have been the most important decoration both in the Qiao Family Grand Courtyard and other Jin Shang courtyards.

The Qiao Family Grand Courtyard has been admired as a bright pearl of residential buildings in North China.

In 1986, the Qi County government rebuilt the courtyard into the Qi County Folk Museum that features art, science, and other things of interest. It contains 42 exhibition rooms displaying a wide range of material covering subject areas such as years, time, season, food, clothing, shelter and transportation, wedding and funeral ceremonies, and agriculture trade activities. In total, approximately 2,000 pieces of exhibits reflect the folktale custom in the Shanxi Jinzhong area. 

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