Ancient city, Pingyao.

The ancient city is a kind of magical charm, wandering in the ancient streets and alleys, looking at the traffic in front of you, imagining the bustling market in those years, touching the marks of the baptism of the years on the blue brick walls, and experiencing the elegance of the century-old house.

Vaguely, the past and present lives seem to be flowing in front of you, 2700 years of time are fleeting, and the inheritance is the ancient national charm nurtured by the water and soil in Jinzhong.

"Book of Rites" said: Lin, phoenix, turtle, dragon, called the four spirits, because the other three are too imperial, Pingyao chose to build the city into a turtle look, turtle city means fixed golden soup, long-term stability.

Facts have proved that the ancient wonderful design, indeed to Pingyao to bring auspiciousness, just like the longevity of the turtle, from the Western Zhou Dynasty Shi Jian, has survived for more than 2,700 years, showing a vivid and unique humanistic, social, economic and trade and religious development of the complete picture.

The walls of the city surround the ancient city and are 6,163 meters long. Walking on the centuries-old city walls, you can see the daily life of the residents of the ancient city, such as housewives drying their clothes and smoke wafting from the rooftops.

The main street is very wide, criss-crossing four streets, eight small streets, seventy-two winding alleys constitute the main traffic veins of the ancient city of Pingyao, and the buildings with herringbone eaves on both sides are all shops in the Ming and Qing dynasties. South Street is the central axis of the ancient city, with many time-honored shops and traditional famous shops, so it is also known as a street in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The three-fold eaves timber frame pavilion is called the city building, and the structure is exquisite and magnificent. Towering high in the heart of the city, across South Street. Legend has it that in ancient times, there was no building here, only a well, and with water, gradually there were people around, and then there was a whole city.

Because there was only this well in the city back then, all the people had to push their own water trucks to line up here, so it is conceivable that this queue had to wait for a long time. So people use the time to wait for water to exchange things with each other, do small business, come and go, the street around this well has become a commercial street, and the market building is also called Jinjing Building because the water in the well is like gold.

After listening to the rain building, I went to the ancient county office, which was the official office of the Pingyao Qipin County Order Office to try the case. Don't say it, it is the first time that Johnson has walked into the county office, and he has only seen it in TV dramas before, but he didn't expect the drum at the gate of the county government to be so small, and he didn't expect the scale of the Yamen of the Seven Sesame Officials to be so huge.

The lobby, the second hall, the inner house, the flower hall, the Changping position, the Zanhou Temple, the land temple, the prison, the public house, the Ten Kings Temple, the Hongshanyi, the supervision and arrest hall and other hall facilities are readily available.

As soon as you enter the lobby, you will see the blue sky and the white sun, the mirror is hanging high, and the couplet reads: Eat the people's food, wear the people's clothes, Mo Dao, the people can deceive themselves, and they are also the people.

I was fortunate to see the old man ascend to the court to handle the case, or a big case of the civil prosecution official, only to see the old man cut off the case in three or two sentences, and the suspect pleaded guilty and surrendered to the law, and the surrounding melon-eating crowd applauded.

When I looked down at the ground, there were two pits on the bluestone floor, which were the marks of people who knelt hard.

Walking back is the prison, gloomy and damp, with a big prison word on the wall, and two vicious dogs on the left and right trapping people in the middle, and from then on words and deeds are restricted, and they cannot speak at will.

There are three people in the cell, and it is quite spacious, there are kangs, there are windows, I think of the famous poem of the little swallow when I was a child: I walked into a room, there were walls on all sides, I looked up to see mice, and I looked down to see cockroaches.

However, the room of the condemned prisoner is not so comfortable, it is really a small black room that has not seen the light of day at all, and he has to be locked in a wooden cage, the environment is miserable and desperate, if there is claustrophobia, it is estimated that he does not have to wait until the autumn to behead, and he does not need to be taken to the Beijing vegetable market to behead, and he will die of depression.

In contrast, the county official's room is much more comfortable, and there is a large back garden, with beautiful scenery, a pond, a small bridge and a small pavilion, which is very chic. But no matter how beautiful the garden is, it is strange to think that the courtyard next door is inhabited by prisoners.

In order to quickly integrate into the new environment, they also had to ask two masters to assist in helping to solve the black and white affairs, and the county officials had to pay out of their own pockets and distribute money from the already small salary to the masters.

Fortunately, the imperial court found out in time and felt that it should be paid a high salary, and a bonus was allocated, otherwise it would be far less earning to be an official than to be a letter in the ticket number.

Walk into a restaurant or shop at will, and the owner will warmly invite you to enter the inn in the inner courtyard, where the sun is shining, and there must be a large water tank with red koi fish in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by various flower pots and flowers. Although Shanxi is dry, the small courtyard makes people feel full of vitality, green and bright.

Looking up again, the ancient tiles, the finely carved gatehouse, and the faded but still bright wooden corridor seem to bring you back to a hundred years ago, which is really wonderful.

In the afternoon, in the courtyard, sitting alone on the stone bench to bask in the sun, listening to the chirping of birds on the eaves, it seems that when you open the door curtain, you can see the young lady wrapped in a three-inch golden lotus is sitting on the kang embroidering.

Not as formal as the courtyard of the capital, the boxy courtyard is finished, and then in a small corner of the innermost, there is always an inconspicuous secret door, and you can enter another layer of the courtyard when you walk in, and there is a special hole inside.

In this way, the twisting and turning layer by layer, it is worthy of the deep house compound of the Jin merchants in ancient times, and I like to go shopping like this treasure hunting, and go to see the corners and corners, there will always be unexpected surprises.

Almost every vinegar shop has such a small bonsai that can circulate vinegar in front of it, and you can smell the strong aroma of vinegar from afar. If you have to use a taste to describe Pingyao, it must be balsamic vinegar well-deserved.

From the street to the alley, shuttling on the shady path, there is another charm, there are a lot fewer people, the surroundings are quiet, occasionally see the door of the very dilapidated house closed, at a glance it is known that it is an old house, the unrestored sense of antiquity makes people feel more mysterious.

The houses on the edge of the ancient city are obviously not as well repaired as the city center, and even retain the feeling of the seventies and eighties of the last century, as if from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

At night, every house in the ancient city is lit up, which is even more beautiful, and the red lanterns in the courtyard of the house can't help but remind Johnson of the big red lanterns hanging high, and the old man lights the lamp in which courtyard, and he will go to the aunt's house to spend the night at night.

Compared with other ancient towns, it is quiet at ten o'clock, and the commercial atmosphere is very light, but there is a kind of simple beauty.