Songzhou: everyday street-life during a stop impromptu.

Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong were just the beginning of our journey through China. We’d big plans for the following two weeks, the batteries in our cameras and drones were fully charged, and all of us were at the top end of the motivation scale. Thus, onward!…

They say the journey’s just as good as the destination. Well I agree with “them” (whoever that may be). Accordingly, en route – as we always do – we planned to stop off at places that look interesting; for example – Songzhou Ancient City, here ->

Here:

Our short walk around the city (for an hour-and-a-half or two) was both interesting and memorable. It’s no Shanghai, Hong Kong, or Beijing (with its Forbidden City), but walking through its streets was still delightful ->

It’s straight away clear of course that everything here has been reconstructed (none of the original (“ancient”) buildings remaining), but the way they’ve kept the ancient style is convincing – and really quite “atmospheric”:

You can walk along this wide wall (you just need to buy a ticket). It’s hardly the multi-kilometer fortress wall of Xi’an, but still not bad at all…

Walking along old fortress walls is always interesting and contemplative. There are also old-style (new-build) churches installed here:

It’s also interesting to look at the surrounding residential areas down below:

Hmmm… “The ONE Hidden Luxury Hotel”. I wonder what it’s like? Will have to stay there… in the next life :)

Inhabitants just going about their lives – despite the city’s antiquity:

On the fortress walls – guards standing… guard:

The canons are made of plastic:

Back in the day, China never had canons like these (or other modern weapons), so China lost the Opium Wars to the aggressive and well-armed English and their allies.

Other views from the city walls of this small city deep within a Chinese province:

We head on down to ground level; it should also be interesting down there…

Treading pavements of city streets – always a pleasure for me, never a chore…

Occasional “vehicles” ->

Side streets ->

Much street-trading:

What’s this? If there wasn’t a Chinese in our posse, we’d probably not have figured it out. But it wasn’t easy for her either, since these places are inhabited by Tibetans…

What a combination: hats and meat! ->

…Most likely yak meat. Yaks are the main breeding stock here.

Barbecue! Delicious! ->

And other miscellaneous items also on sale:

Durio! ->

This truck with grapes (surprisingly tasty Chinese grapes, really top-notch) for some reason wasn’t having much luck with the police. Although… – maybe they’re just friends?

A few portrait photos taken by my practically constant travel companion DZ:

Actually, some of the foregoing pics were taken by DZ, IK, DK, SS, or Petrovich. I didn’t indicate their authorship with their tacit consent :)

There are rather nice art objects installed in different places. Some are hand-polished:

Not bad!

Remember – we were in Sichuan Province, where there are a lot of wild pandas:

There’s also a small Buddhist monastery very close by (in a neighboring town). It’s not particularly remarkable, but since this was the first monastery on our route, we allowed ourselves the luxury of taking a little time off from sleep and spending it culturally:

By the way, neither Google nor Yandex Maps show this monastery!

That’s all for today folks, but I’ll be back with more tales from the Chinese side shortly…

The rest of the photos from our China-2024 trip are here.