I arrived in Datong at 6AM after taking the sleeper train from Beijing. This was more of what I was expecting from a Chinese city. It is a medium size city by Chinese standards, but pretty big for us….although you can’t really tell by the look of it. 2.6 million is the official population compared with 1.3 million for San Antonio and suburbs. There were people doing tia chi in the street, vendors frying things for breakfast, stray dogs running about, and just off the main roads some sizable trash piles. The air was thick with the fragrant aroma of vegetable waste and buring coal, with a hint of raw sewage in certain spots. As I walked around a bit trying to kick start what I knew was going to be my first experience with a public squat toilet I saw donkeys pulling vegetable carts and late model motor cycles zooming through the otherwise empty streets. It was early still. Datong is a coal mining town and I would see reminders of that fact all day.
When I got off the train I was greeted by a nice man from CITS (China Internation Travel Service) who organized a tour and a train out. It was quite a whirlwind day. I walked aroud for a few hours before the tour and met back at the train station at 9am. From there we foreigners were herded into two buses and taken to the Yungang caves. In the side of a sandstone cliff arists have carved out caves and Buddas inside the caves. I saw 20 caves in all. WOW! The sculptures are over 1500 years old and many are amazingly well preserved. Especially so considering they are directly across the road from an open coal mine. Many still had color on them; although I am not sure if they were repainted. I assume they were, but even so very impressive.
The next stop was the Hanging Monastery over an hour away by van through landscape that looked alot like Sierra Nevada. There are communities of people trying to make a living farming out there. Black plumes of smoke rose out of some of the homes and restuarants and out front there were piles of coal. Many people still use it as a fuel source. Effective, but not very clean. The monastery was the reason for my trip and it did not disappoint. It is a 1400 year old wooden structure perched three stories up the side of a cliff. I thought that was pretty impressive. During its height it houses about 5 monks. As it was still Golden Week in China the place was packed. It did not occur to me that climbing around wooded structure that was built in the time of King Authur three stories above ground with 200 Chinese was perhaps not the best idea until I was shoulder to shoulder walking along a three foot wide terrace looking down. Oh, it went far down. I got a little nervous, but held it together. It was an experience.
Then it was back to Datong and another sleeper train to Tia Yuan, where I took a bus to the ancient tourist town of Ping Yao.
