Ancient city, Pingyao.

The ancient city has a magical charm. It wanders in ancient streets and alleys, looking at the bustling traffic in front of you, imagine the prosperity of the city back then, caressing the mark of being baptized by time on the blue brick wall, and experiencing the graceful and quiet elegance of the century-old house.

Vaguely, the past and present lives seem to flow before our eyes. 2,700 years have passed on, and what is passed down is the ancient national charm raised by the water and soil of Jinzhong.

The Book of Rites says: The unicorn, phoenix, turtle, and dragon are called the four spirits. Because the other three are too emperor, Pingyao chose to build the city into a turtle. The turtle city means to strengthen the golden soup and be in a long-term state of peace.

Facts have proved that the wonderful ancient designs have indeed brought good luck to Pingyao, just like the longevity of a turtle. It has been preserved for more than 2,700 years since Shi Jian of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and has been preserved to this day, showing a complete picture of humanities, society, economy, trade and religious development.

The city wall surrounds the ancient city for a total of 6,163 meters long. When walking on the city wall for hundreds of years, you can see the daily life scenes of the residents in the ancient city, including housewives drying clothes, and smoke from cooking fires floating from the roof, and the vicissitudes of history and the real people's livelihood.

The main streets are very wide, with four crisscrossing streets, eight small streets, and seventy-two winding alleys forming the main traffic veins of Pingyao Ancient City. The buildings with herringbone eaves on both sides are shops that were found in the Ming and Qing dynasties. South Street is the central axis of the ancient city, with time-honored brands and traditional famous shops, so it is also called a street in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The three-eaves wooden building is called the City Tower, with exquisite structure and magnificent. It stands tall in the center of the city and spans the South Street. According to legend, there was no building here in ancient times, only a well. With water, there were gradually others around, and later the entire city.

Because there was only this well in the city at that time, all the people had to push their own water trucks to queue up here for water. It can be imagined that the line would be long and wait for a long time. So people used the time they waited for water to exchange things with each other and started small business. After a while, the streets around the well became commercial streets, and the city building was also known as Jinjing Tower because the water in the well was as beautiful as gold.

After passing Tingyu Tower, you will go to the Gu County Office. This was the official office of the office of the seventh-rank county magistrate of Pingyao that year. You can't say that this is the first time that Johnson Johnson has entered the county government. He has only seen it in TV series before. He didn't expect that the drum at the county government office was so small, and he didn't expect that the size of the seventh-rank sesame government office was so large.

The lobby, the second hall, the inner house, the flower hall, the Changping Cang, the Zanhou Temple, the land temple, the prison, the public hall, the Shiwang Temple, the Hongshan Office, the Supervisor Hall and other halls are all equipped.

As soon as I entered the lobby, I saw the blue sky and sun, with a bright mirror hanging high. The couplet said: Eat the food of the people and wear the clothes of the people. Don’t say that the people can bully themselves. If you get an official, you will not be honored and lose an official, don’t say that one official is useless and depends on one official.

I was fortunate to see the master being promoted to the church to handle the case, and it was a major case where the civil servant sued the official. The master said in a few words and found that the case was cleared. Without moving the board, the suspect pleaded guilty and was punished. The people around him applauded and praised him.

I looked down and saw two pits on the bluestone floor on the ground, which were marks that a person kneeled down.

Walking backwards, it will be a prison, which is gloomy and damp. There is a big word for prison on the wall. Two evil dogs on the left and right trap people in the middle. From then on, they will be restricted and they cannot speak casually.

There are three people in the cell, and the inside is quite spacious, with a kang and a window. I remembered the famous poem by Xiaoyanzi when I was a child: When I walked into a room, there were walls on all sides. I looked up and saw rats and cockroaches.

However, the room of the death row prisoner was not so comfortable. It was a small dark room that was completely blind. It was also locked in a wooden cage. The environment was miserable and desperate. If there was claustrophobia, I guess I didn’t have to wait until the autumn to ask for the beheading, nor did I have to be taken to the Caishikou, Beijing, and I would be depressed to death.

In contrast, the county magistrate's room is much more comfortable, and there is also a large back garden with beautiful scenery, with ponds, small bridges and small pavilions, which are very unique. However, no matter how beautiful the garden is, it feels strange when you think of the prisoners living in the next yard.

When officials of the Qing Dynasty took office, they had to leave their hometowns without their families. It was not easy to become officials and had little salary. In order to quickly integrate into the new environment, they also had to ask two divisions, one civil and one military officials to help solve the problem of black and white. The county magistrate had to pay out of his own pocket and distribute the money from the already small salary to the divisions.

Fortunately, the court discovered it in time and felt that it should be a high salary to support the integrity, so it allocated additional bonus funds, otherwise it would be far better to be an official than to be a trustee in a ticket account.

If you walk into a restaurant or shop casually, the boss will warmly invite you to visit the inn in the inner courtyard. The quiet courtyard is sunny, and there must be a large water tank with red koi in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by various flower pots, and flowers are in full bloom. Although Shanxi is dry, the courtyard makes people feel full of vitality, green and watery.

Looking up again, the ancient tiles, the carefully crafted gatehouses, and the faded but still bright wooden corridors seem to bring you back a hundred years ago. This feeling is really wonderful.

The mottled brick walls are printed with light and sad carved old windows, as if they were still gentle in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the afternoon, I sat alone on the stone bench to bask in the sun for a while. Listening to the birds chirping on the eaves, it seemed that when I pushed open the curtain, I could see the lady wrapped in three inches of golden lotus sitting on the kang embroidered flowers.

It is not as well-behaved as the courtyard in Beijing. After walking around the square yard, there is always an inconspicuous secret door in a small corner inside. You can enter another floor of the courtyard, which is another unique world inside.

Just like this, the twists and turns are the deep courtyards of Shanxi merchants in ancient times. I like the way to visit treasure hunting like this. If you go to see every corner and corner, you will always have unexpected surprises.

There are small bonsais like this that can circulate vinegar at the door of almost every vinegar shop, and you can smell the strong aroma of vinegar from afar. If you have to use a taste to describe Pingyao, it must be worthy of balsamic vinegar.

From the street to the alley, shuttled through the shady path, there was another charm. There was a lot of people and the surroundings were quiet. Occasionally, I saw the gates of very dilapidated houses closed, and I could tell at a glance that it was an old house. The unrepaired ancient feeling made people feel even more mysterious.

The houses on the edge of the ancient city are obviously not as well repaired as the city center, and they even retain the feeling of the 1970s and 1980s, as if they were traveling from the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

At night, every house in the ancient city lights were on, which was even more beautiful. The red lanterns in the house couldn't help but remind Johnson of the big red lanterns hanging high. The master lit the lights in the courtyard and went to the wife's house to spend the night at night.
Chapter completed!