A dutch guy I met in Beijing told me it was worth stopping off in a place called Pingyao on the way to Xi'an. So I did. and it was. An old town of traditional two storey courtyard houses, all enclosed in a thick, high city wall it was superbly picturesque. If you've seen "Raise the Red Lantern" a famous Chinese movie from about 10 years ago, that was filmed here. It was still dark at 5am when my train arrived. The hostel I was staying at arranged a free pick up from the station. I was expecting to see someone holding up a piece of paper with my name on it but instead a guy came up to me holding a mobile phone in his hand. without saying a word he scrolled through some messages and showed me one. All in Chinese except Nicole. Guess he was my guy!
Careening through the misty streets I felt like I'd gone back in time. Only a few rickshaws and heavily laden bicycles were out and about, daily business just starting. The low wooden houses and unlit red lanterns made it all seem so incredibly romantic.

They gave me a room to sleep in for a couple of hours and when I emerged it was to a different world. Shops and cafes spilling out onto the narrow paved streets and throngs of people. As I had my coffee and pancakes I noticed that there was a surprising number of big expensive cameras dangling from peoples necks, and sometimes more than one. Chinese are quite snappy happy but these were really impressive things that made my little Nikon look like a toy. I soon found out that I had turned up on Day 2 of an International Photographic Festival!
Turned out to be extremely interesting. There were exhibitions everywhere, temples, old cotton mills, courtyards of hotels. And people were just taking photos of everything and everyone, often with very little regard to whether a person might like having a camera stuck in their face as they are making their breakfast (life in China is very much conducted out on the streets). So I felt a little more comfortable in asking people if I could take a photo of the food they were cooking or their shop etc. Beginning to really wish I had a digital camera though. Am getting quite green with envy over some of the nifty cameras I've seen.