The dude at the temple in Ping Yao.
Like the rest of China, there’s no shortage of unscrupulous characters preying on tourists. We ventured into a temple that was part of the visitors pass to check it out. We bowed to the deities and all like our parents always told us. Out of nowhere this dude comes out with incense for us to burn. That’s cool and all. Turns out he wants 100yuan from me and 10yuan from karen for the incense. That’ like $12. He gave no warning about the price and shit. Fuck that! I think he was yapping about the worthiness of my donation. In my broken mandarin, i told him the gods would not like you extorting cash from me and just walked out.
Since that incident and a massive funeral procession that happened by the hotel, Ping Yao turned into some creep heeby jeeby town. We then wandered to an old admin bldg that was a site of celebrations with a decent courtyard. There was also a prison there and gave us the chills. The doors were open and DARK and the torture items were hanging along the place as if they were prides of joy. The Chinese sure know how to torture people. Add to that, the place was open for centuries until like 1960!
