day 51: 平遥 (pingyao) – 张兰 (zhanglan) = 16,4km

I’m not tough. I’m a sissy.

…but I’ll tell you more about that later.

First things first: I left 平遥 (pingyao) today, walking southwest on highway G108.

Of course, behind the tourist sites, the city had yet another face:

Sometimes I wonder what all of this must have looked like before progress demanded its toll.

Anyways, I guess we’ll never know. So it’s better to just appreciate what is there now:

This is 双林寺 (shuanglin temple), a Buddhist site of worship originally dating from the Northern Qi-dynasty (北齐 – 550-577) and reconstructed during Song (宋 – 960-1279).

I didn’t notice the sign that said “no photo”, and thus happily snapped away until someone told me to stop:

May the gods forgive me.

I noticed these nice little statues:

Only some of them had been blinded:

Looks creepy, doesn’t it, this poor brutalized maiden.

I asked a few local people and I asked some of the guards, but all I could make out was that this had been an act of vandalism “a long time ago”. Are we – again- looking at the legacy of the “Cultural Revolution”?

…

You actually don’t care too much for semi-educated history lessons, do you?

Shall I instead tell you how I came to realize that I am a sissy?

Well, here you go:

Does this photograph make you feel the cold that I’ve felt today?

I’m not kidding; minus ten degrees and a blasting wind (frontal, always frontal) really had me looking pretty miserable today I guess. Torso bent, eyes slit, nose running, no joke, I am a sissy, not a tough guy.

That’s why I called it a day after I got to the first place that kind of looked promising:

Now the first hotel I asked wanted 80rmb for a room with heating, AC and a restroom out on the hallway. I told them to stop kidding and come up with a reasonable price, like 30, maybe. They told me that I wouldn’t even get it for 60.

Looking around a little more found me an almost similar room for 15rmb.

You know how much I love a good bargain.

Now I’m freezing my sissy ass off.

Soundtrack: Ärzte – “3-Tage-Bart”

—total: 748,1km