A chance to travel back in time today

Tuesday saw the opening ceremony of the eighth Pingyao International Film Festival which gathers many filmmakers, stars and moviegoers.

During the Spring Festival and May Day holidays, Pingyao received about 80,000 tourists per day. For the upcoming National Day holiday, it expects more visitors largely thanks to the video game Black Myth: Wukong.

The game, launched internationally on Aug 20 by Chinese developer Game Science, has gone viral online. It features temples, statues of gods and Buddhas based on real ones in Shanxi, a province preserving the most ancient pagodas and temples in China, intriguing many people to visit those historical buildings, including the Shuanglin Temple and Zhenguo Temple not far from the ancient city of Pingyao.

Booming tourism has brought not only wealth but also challenges in how to better preserve the ancient city for its historical and cultural significance and for the residents to live a better life so that it can live on.

"Overall, the environment in Pingyao is getting better and businesses are good for the residents' lives," Gong says. But she hopes for a warmer atmosphere composed of antique streets, elderly people, tea-drinking, Chinese chess-playing, and pets, facilitated by modern infrastructure — "a vibe with less homogenized commercial activities".