Foreign briefing: Pingyao goes modern

1. China

In Pingyao, a 2,700-year-old city in Shanxi Province, history is a thing of the present. Within the last two years, a luxury hotel, a culinary tour and nearby high-speed rail access have added modern comforts to its traditional charm.

An important financial center during the Qing Dynasty, Pingyao has long been known in China for its historic banks, courtyard homes and Ming Dynasty city wall. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

The city joined the luxury tourism circuit in 2009 with the opening of Jing’s Residence, an 18-room, Relais & Chateaux-listed boutique hotel in the former home of a Qing Dynasty silk merchant. It offers hand-carved window frames, rice-paper ceilings, wireless Internet and Continental cuisine. Rates begin at about $170 a night. https://www.jingsresidence.com

The hotel serves as the base for three-day culinary tours by Beijing-based Hias Gourmet that visit a Gouda cheese farm,an artisanal vinegar workshop and more. The tour price is about $432 a person, with four people. https://www.hiasgourmet.com/shanxi-tour.htm.

“Shanxi province is the heartland of noodles,” said Hias Gourmet founder Adlyn Adam-Teoh.

A high-speed rail line completed in 2009 whisks visitors from Beijing to Taiyuan, about 60 miles from Pingyao, in three hours. Pingyao is expected to get its own stop on a rail line opening in 2013.

—Jonathan Kaiman

2. TunisiaThis Arab country, which overthrew its autocratic leader in popular uprisings that swept the Mideast, has suffered a deep drop in tourism. Hotel occupancy is down 50% from last summer, government officials said. Lingering unrest and an influx of refugees from Libya’s civil war were blamed.Associated Press

3. Egypt

Archaeologists have begun excavating a 4,500-year-old wooden boat found next to the Great Pyramid of Giza. The boat, one of two buried next to the Pharaoh Khufu, who is credited with building the ancient pyramid, is inscribed with the ruler’s name. Zahi Hawass, minister of state for antiquities, said he hoped the display of the boat, expected in about four years, would boost tourism.

—Associated Press

4.Germany

Berlin’s latest tourist attraction is a futuristic box that will sit for the next few years on a downtown square where a replica Prussian palace is to open in 2019. The so-called Humboldt Box, about 90 feet high, is opposite the neoclassical Museum Island complex. It offers spectacular views and houses exhibits on the planned palace.

—Associated Press

5.Mexico

A day trip from Tucson-based Gray Line Tours called “Border Crisis: Fact or Fiction” takes truth-seeking tourists on a visit to the storied international line. For $89 each, visitors get to meet the people who live and work in the border area and police it at Nogales, Ariz., across from the Mexican state of Sonora. https://www.graylinearizona.com.

—Reuters

Caution spots

The State Department has recently issued warnings or alerts for these areas:

Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, because of security problems and unrest.

South Sudan, because of security problems