Yuncheng is in Shanxi, in North China.
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Shanxi · City Guide
Yuncheng, Where Guan Yu Was Born and Yuan Painters Worked.
Overview
Why Go
Yongle Palace holds about a thousand square metres of Taoist wall painting from the 1320s, including 286 figures nearly three metres tall. In 1959 the whole complex, murals included, was cut out and moved 20 kilometres for a reservoir.
The Three Kingdoms general who became the deity of martial loyalty and of wealth came from Xiezhou. Every Chinatown in the world has a Guandi temple; this is the one they all descend from, and it is a large one of its kind.
Just four wooden buildings from the Tang dynasty survive anywhere in China. One of them, dated 831, stands at Guangren Wang Temple in Ruicheng, a few minutes from Yongle Palace and visited by almost nobody.
The Hedong salt lake has been worked since prehistory, and historians argue an early states in the Yellow River valley formed around control of it. Algae now turn the evaporation ponds different colours in summer.
Stork Tower is the setting of a four-line Tang poem that almost every Chinese schoolchild can recite. The poem is genuine; the tower visitors see was rebuilt in 2002, the original having gone centuries ago.
See
Four halls of Yuan Taoist painting, with the great procession in the Sanqing hall the reason to come. No photography inside and the light is deliberately low. Two hours, and take time in one hall rather than all four.
The ancestral temple to Guan Yu, laid out like a palace with a full sequence of gates, carved stone dragon columns and the Chunqiu tower at the back. Busy with worshippers as well as visitors. Two hours.
A small Tang hall dated 831 standing in a walled yard in a village, with the deep eaves and plain brackets of the period. There is almost nothing else to it and that is the point. Half an hour.
Three connected historic quarters with 42 listed buildings, a Sui-era official garden and ordinary shops and barbers still trading. No gate and no pass. Half a day, and the drum music plays at the yamen.
Evaporation ponds banded pink, green and ochre by algae and mineral content, with the Zhongtiao range behind. Ideal from a raised road in summer. An hour, and it is free from the public viewpoints.
A 2002 tower on the site of the poem, and Pujiu Temple nearby, the setting of the play Romance of the Western Chamber. Both are about the texts rather than the buildings. Half a day for the pair.
On the Map
Approximate locations of the attractions above, across Yuncheng.
Eat
Round pastries fried in oil and coated in sesame, with a sticky malt filling that pulls into threads when visitors break one. They are a Wenxi speciality and have been made the same way for a very long time.
Twisted dough fried until hard and glassy, sold plain or salted in lengths as long as the forearm. Jishan makes the version other Shanxi counties buy. They keep for weeks in a paper bag.
Apples grown on the loess terraces with big day and night temperature swings, picked from late September. They are firm and high in acid rather than simply sweet, and the county sells at the orchard gate.
Mutton broth poured over torn flatbread and vermicelli, lighter and less thick than the Xi'an version across the river. Eaten early and sold from small shops around the old market.
Do
The Sanqing hall procession is too big to take in at once, so pick one figure and follow the line of its robe. That is how the painters worked and it is the sole way the scale resolves.
It is a few minutes from Yongle Palace and many tour groups skip it. Look at the bracket sets and the eave depth, then compare them with any Ming or Qing hall later the same day.
The colours come from algae and change through the summer, strongest in July and August and washed out after rain. The raised road on the north side gives the view without a pass.
The Jiangzhou drum repertoire uses more than ten striking techniques, including hitting the rim and the frame. Performances run at the old yamen in the tourist season and around festivals.
When
Mild and dry with blossom across the orchards. The strongest window for the temples, the old town and the villages.
Hot, with the salt lake colours at their many intense and the river valley heavy. Indoor sites and early mornings.
Apple harvest, clear air and the ideal light on the timber halls. The other good window and the busiest at the Guandi temple.
Cold and grey, the murals unheated and the villages quiet. The Guandi temple fills for the lunar new year.
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Yuncheng is in Shanxi, in North China.
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