Day 11 in China

We are now in Datong having survived our first 6 hour train ride on Thursday.  We were sorry to leave Beijing as we had just gotten pretty good at getting around town by subway, bus and taxi.  On Wednesday we had a great day visiting the Ming Tombs outside of Beijing.  We were very brave and took two public buses to get out there.  Everyone was very nice in trying to help us find the right bus even a taxi driver who wanted us to take her taxi told us where to take the next bus from.  We saw three of the main sites at the Tombs - the sacred way, Dingling and Changling. The weather was great and we had a really good day. 

 

On Thursday we met up with Jesse Liu again at the Beijing Train Station.  The train was pretty good - fairly crowded but it was a smooth ride.  We passed through some mountains first and then fields and fields of corn.  The people we saw along the way looked like they lived a hard life.  Donkey and mule carts were the main source of transport and many people were using machetes to cut the corn or other crops.  As we got closer to Datong, we passed a huge power plant - there are two in this region - both powered by coal.  This area is one of the largest coal producing areas in China so the air is pretty polluted.  When we arrived we went to purchase our tickets for Pingyao - the next place we will visit.  It seems that most people do not book tickets too far in advance.  Also in many places they only know about the trains from their station - not other stations.  So we successfully purchased sleeper berths to Pingyao on Saturday night to arrive Sunday morning.

 

Our hotel in Datong was recommended by a friend of Jesse's.  I don't know what we will do when she leaves us.  She has been asking many of her university friends for ideas and suggestions on hotels, things to see, and restaurants.  She orders food, tells taxi drivers where to go, gets us good discounts on hotels, etc.  It will be much harder without her but I am sure we will be OK.  Once settled in our room, we have dinner and plan for the next day.  We decided to hire a car to take us to the sites around Datong - some of them are quite far out. 

 

We spend Friday at Heng Shan - a Daoist mountain, the Hanging Temple, a Buddhist temple built over 1000 years ago, and a 1000 year old wooden Pagoda - the oldest and tallest in the world.  We cannot go to the top of the Pagoda as it is leaning a bit and they are concerned that something will happen....they are planning to try and restore it soon.  Our driver is great - the scenery along the way between these sights makes you thankful for what you have - small farmers living in very old mud brick houses trying to grow crops on fairly dry land.  The air is really pretty bad.  At one point during the day we get caught in a huge traffic jam - there are coal truck every where on a road that was built for donkey carts - the air is so think we could hardly breathe....it was pretty bad.  Our driver was great though weaving around the trucks and getting us out of the jam.  While in the car many times the best thing was just to close your eyes...people pass on the left, the right, down the middle - what ever works.....the driver's best friend is the car horn!

 

So besides the crazy driving and the bad air - the sights were amazing.  We climbed up the sacred mountain at Heng Shan and visited many of the temples.  There are still some monks living at some of the sites.  Just imagining the building of some of these temples is amazing.  They are not as old as the Hanging Temple and the Pagoda but most were build in the 1500 and 1600 - still pretty old.  We decide to take a two-seater cable car down the mountain when we are done visiting the temples.  The Hanging Temple is pretty spectacular.  No monks are there any more - the whole structure hangs from a cliff wall high above a small river that is now dammed.  It is a bit scary to walk around as it is very high up.  It is an amazing site with many buddist alters. 

 

We get back to our hotel 10 hours after we left in the morning - a long day!  We wash up and have a very big dinner as we had not had much to eat during the day.  I have the best sleep that I have had since arriving.

 

Today we are going to use the same driver and visit some near by Buddhist caves and some temples in the city.  We plan to be back at the hotel around 6pm so that we can collect our bags and get to the train station by 8pm for our 8:40 train.  Sleeping on the train should be an experience....it is the only train so we don't have much choice. 

 

We plan to be in Pingyao for a day or two and then move on to Xi'an.  We will try to update more from Xi'an.

 

Chow for now.

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