City God Temple 城隍庙 of Pingyao 平遥

I spent the night at the Zhengjia International Youth Hostel chatting with my roommates. Rather, they chatted me up, since I wasn’t the type to start a conversation in Chinese. One of them was from Xi’an and the other was from Suzhou. The Xi’an guy kept bringing up topics like Chinese history of which I knew very little about. The Suzhou guy commented how people from very old cities like Xi’an would more often than not bring up topics about history and how he would sound like an old man. I wholeheartedly agreed. They would be only be spending one night here in the city and have already explored the “must see” sights of the ancient town. They decided to proceed to Mount Wutai, I normally would have loved to have some companions but I was towards the end of my trip and I would have little cash with me by that time. I needed to hold back.

The next day was another disappointment. The skies were still dark and it was still drizzling. At least it wasn’t hot. The cool weather made for great exploring. Yamen Street, where the hostel was, the site of a couple of “must see” sights. The Ancient Government Building was one of them. On the other side of the street was the City God Temple, my first stop in the day’s exploration. The City God Temple’s name was familiar to me as I have visited several places with that name. A lot of old Chinese cities would have this temple as something like a guardian for the city. Hangzhou and Shanghai both have these as I’m sure other old Chinese cities.

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