The site

An exceptionally complete Ming-era walled town in the Shanxi highlands, its six-kilometre rampart of 1370 still enclosing a grid of streets, courtyard houses, temples and shopfronts. In the 19th century Pingyao was the cradle of Chinese banking, home to the country’s first draft banks (piaohao) that moved silver across the empire on paper. Spared the demolition that reshaped most Chinese cities, it offers a rare, almost intact picture of a Han town of the imperial era.

Field notes

civilizations

Imperial China

types

City · Wall

built

1,370 CE — 1,400 CE

occupied

800 BCE — 1,900 CE

country

China