China's best-preserved Ming walled city
Pingyao is China's most intact ancient city — a UNESCO World Heritage Site where 6km of Ming-era walls enclose a living town of courtyard houses, shadow puppet theatres, and the original counting houses of the Rishengchang bank, the world's first draft-banking institution. Pingyao beef and pork-rib noodles are the essential street foods.
Founded over 2,700 years ago, Pingyao rose to extraordinary wealth in the Qing dynasty as the banking capital of China — the 19 major draft banks headquartered here financed trade from Siberia to Southeast Asia. The city's walls, temples, and courtyard architecture survive intact largely because Pingyao was too poor to modernise after the banks collapsed in 1911.