Jia Zhangke's Shanxi: the pagoda, the walls and the county town behind his films

Most film pilgrimages in China lead to a studio backlot or a famous street. Jia Zhangke's lead to a county town in central Shanxi that most itineraries skip. Fenyang (汾阳) is the town he grew up in and kept coming back to film, and Pingyao, about an hour's drive east, is where he now holds a film festival.

The pagoda at the edge of Fenyang

Mountains May Depart opens and closes on the Wenfeng Pagoda (文峰塔, Wénfēng Tǎ), a tall Ming-dynasty brick tower on the town's southeastern edge. It stands in open ground, so you can see it from a long way off, just as the film shows it. Go late in the afternoon, when the brick turns the colour of dry earth and the fields around the base go quiet.

The streets of Xiao Wu and Platform are less easy to spot, because county towns change their shopfronts every few years. What stays the same is the layout: a main street, the bus station, and karaoke signs lit after dark. Walk it slowly and the films start to line up with what you see.

Walls borrowed from the next town

Fenyang no longer has an intact city wall, so the wall-top scenes in Platform were shot on Pingyao's. Those Ming walls are complete, and you can walk along the top on the ancient-city ticket. The ramparts on the north side are the quietest, and the view over the grey tiled roofs is close to the one in the film.

平遥的城墙，替汾阳在电影里站了二十多年。

For the translation: Pingyao's walls have stood in for Fenyang's on screen for more than twenty years.

When to go

The Pingyao International Film Festival runs in October in a converted diesel-engine factory just outside the old city walls. Screenings sell out fast, but the town is busy with film people for the whole week, and the autumn light suits both towns. Stay in Pingyao and make Fenyang a day trip. Stop at Xinghuacun, the home of fenjiu (汾酒) liquor, on the way back.