A weekend in Pingyao

Spent last weekend at the 2,700-year old city of Pingyao that's one of the many UNESCO World Heritage sites in this country. An entirely walled city, it's the place to visit to see the best-preserved Imperial Chinese architecture spanning over five centuries: gray brick courtyard houses, extravagant family mansions (one of which as the set for Raise the Red Lantern), a Ming city wall, Taoist and Buddhist temples, and China's earliest commercial banks.
Coincidentally, just a couple of weeks ago, the NY Times did this nice little article about how Pingyao's raise and fall as China's banking capital in the mid-19th century can be read as a cautionary tale for the United States.