Where to Stay in Pingyao: Inside the Walls

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 03:50:00 +0800

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My first Pingyao booking was made the lazy way, on a booking site, in a hurry: the cheapest room inside the old city, no map, no thought. I got off a train at a station I hadn’t realised was the better part of ten kilometres from the walls, and spent the first hour of my trip working out which gate my inn was behind.

Where to Stay in Datong: Courtyards or Yungang Road

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 02:00:00 +0800

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My first Datong booking was made on a phone, on a train, an hour outside Beijing, and it put me inside a wall. I’d come for the Yungang Grottoes and the hanging monastery and picked a courtyard inn because the photographs looked old and the price looked low. I’ve been travelling in China for a decade, and what I hadn’t understood is that Datong’s old city is a real, walled, largely pedestrian place, and that my taxi would stop at a gate and I’d walk the last stretch over stone flags with a suitcase, to a doorway with two lanterns where someone was waiting with a key.

Shanxi on China Travel Guide

Where to Stay in Pingyao: Inside the Walls

Where to Stay in Datong: Courtyards or Yungang Road