the.rjj.travel

Most ancient cities in China know exactly how to perform for tourists. Yulin doesn’t seem to care. I arrived expecting another reconstructed old town filled with souvenir shops and tourist food. Instead, I found streets that still belong almost entirely to local people—fruit sellers, street barbers, old tailor shops, and elderly residents playing cards beneath the remaining city walls. Yulin did not preserve all of its walls, but it kept something much harder to rebuild: the life of the city itself. Then, just over an hour outside Yulin, the story opens into something even bigger—Tongwancheng, a capital built by the Xiongnu around 1,600 years ago. There are no palaces left, only rammed-earth walls, but some still rise as high as an eight- or nine-storey building. Add the Great Wall at Zhenbeitai and the centuries of cliff inscriptions inside Red Stone Gorge, and Yulin starts to feel less like a single destination and more like layer after layer of China’s frontier history. That is why it has become one of my three favourite historic cities in China—not because it is perfectly preserved, but because it is still living for itself. Next stop: the countryside of northern Shaanxi. 📌Yulin, Shaanxi 榆林, 陕西 #yulin #shaanxi #chinatravel #ancientchina #xiongnuempire