Datong and Pingyao, Shanxi Province

Welcome back, or welcome…

Departing Hohhot was nowhere near as spectacular as it was arriving – no sandstorm, no electrical storm, just a straightforward taxi ride to the station and a 4 hour train trip to Datong.  The train was pretty crowded and there were a lot of people with standing tickets – they just keep on selling tickets and people stand in the aisles, between carriages and I have heard sometimes even standing in the toilets!

Our Hostel in Datong is fairly new and is located on the 21^st and 22^nd floor of a building in downtown giving great views of the city and surroundings on a clear day, -yes we did get a couple of clear days and another sandstorm which had the hostel staff running around shutting windows.  It was again quite the experience to see it coming across the city as a great rolling cloud.

Whilst doing some research for this trip it quickly becomes obvious that each town/city has either the largest/tallest/oldest/most statues or caves and it would be easy to become cynical if you tried to see them all.  I found a couple of references to the Yungang Grottoes just outside Datong which went along the lines, “if you only have time or want to see one set of caves and Buddha statues this is the place to go”.  Can report that we reckon this would have to be pretty accurate.  And it was as easy as catching a local bus right outside our hostel.

The Yungang Grottoes were simply amazing. Caves and Buddha effigies carved into a series of hills along the side of a valley.  Some had huge temples built onto the front of the rock face creating a temple/cave structure for the statues.  At the museum later in the day we learnt that most of the caves had temple structures built over them but had been destroyed over the years, mostly by fire and war.  So how many of these Buddha statues were there?  The smallest ones were about 150mm high and a whole series of them might have covered the entrance way into a cave, some were around 3 metres tall and the grand-daddy of them all – 72metres high! –carved inside a grotto hewn into the side of a hill…most impressive.  On site was also a very flash museum which was also well worth a visit. –photos

Next day we hired a taxi with a couple of Swiss guys and headed out at 7.30am on a pre-arranged journey.  First up after an hour was the Hanging Monastery at Hengshan. This Monastery is over 1500 years old and built on a sheer cliff face overlooking a river valley in a gorge.  It is seriously cool and dwarfed by the size of the rock face it precariously clings to -the poles that appear to help prop the buildings up are for appearances only as we saw some guy shake a couple of them and they wobbled- apparently the support beams are all wedged horizontally into the cliff face. -photos

We then went further on through the gorge and up a cable car to another part of the mountain which again had many temples but nothing as spectacular as one on the side of a cliff.  On the way back we visited the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, at 66 metres tall and built in 1056 with a huge Buddhist statue inside.   Back at the hostel we teamed up with others from the hostel and went out for a local meal and a couple of the guys had just done the Trans-Siberian train trip, St Petersburg to Beijing –now that sure sounded interesting!

From Datong we made our way to Pingyao which is an ancient walled town which is reasonably well preserved – may have something to do with the fact that it was the financial centre of China until the early 1900’s when modern banking saw the old systems decline.  We visited an old banking house premises which had underground vaults for all the silver and gold reserves that they held. It was a large courtyard style premises with different small offices for staff according to the geographical area they served, their specific trade expertise and seniority.  Found this all very interesting.

There were many other “courtyard” style museums of other businesses and activities and another one we visited was a newspaper museum.  Whilst obviously the vast majority was in Chinese there were a selection of Western newspapers with front pages of International significance; USA puts man on moon, September 11 Twin Towers,  –that sort of thing.  What about this one I found, a copy of a paper printed and circulated by the CPC, The Anti-Japanese Daily! 

We walked the streets and alleys of Pingyao and also about 3.5 kms on top of the old wall – parts were blocked off so couldn’t do the whole 6kms. Did a day trip which included visiting an old village, Zhang Bi, which back in the day was a small fortified town but the point of difference was it had an underground defence system which ran for 15kms on three levels.  We did the guided tour in the tunnels as was not keen on getting lost down there.

In many of these towns there are always temples with a variety of statues. At times it is clear to see that the statues are replicas or not of the same age as the buildings they are in and at times you may wonder-why?  Part of China’s more recent history included a period known as the “Cultural Revolution” from 1966 till 1976 during which the idea was to enforce communism by removing among other things cultural elements from Chinese society.  Across the country historical relics and artefacts were destroyed and cultural and religious sites were ransacked by Mao’s Red Guard.  Now to have someone publicly discuss this period is just a big no-no so was more than a little surprised to have our guide openly say that the statues were all copies of the originals that were destroyed during but that the paintings and art on the actual walls were original was in a way refreshing to hear some actual truth about what happened in those dark times.

Again some great meals were had, one with a Micrsoft executive and his wife, he works in Beijing and was present when a couple of weeks earlier the Chinese had raided the offices as part of “anti-competitive” inquiries.  Seems the Chinese don’t like overseas companies making what they consider to be too much profit and investigate them – and often they end up getting fined!  At the moment they are targeting the motor vehicle industry and the profits they are making.  But how about this? – earlier we had met a young German guy working in Beijing for Volkswagon who told us they employ 85,000 people in China.  Apparently some manufacturers are considering their future in China due to these “anti-foreign and excessive profit” activities and then what will happen to all the jobs??

Anyway, Datong and Pingyao were great places with plenty to see and do and many of our fellow travellers seemed to be on the Hohhot-Datong-Pingyao-Xian, (or reverse) trail as part of their China adventures.

Off to Xian next!!

1, On the train.  2, Datong.  3-6 Yungang Grottoes.

Hanging Monastery at Hengshan.

1-3, Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, 66 metres tall and built in 1056. 4, Dust storm in Datong.
5, Tourist street in Pingyao. 6, Jonathan on the Pingyao wall with a friend.

1, On Pingyao wall.  2, Our room. 3, Street vendor. 4, Vault in old banking house in Pingyao.
5, Glass maker, 6, Family burning items to remember ancestors.

1-3, Wang family courtyard/village. 4, Zhang Bi Ancient Fortress, 5-6 lady reading by the the God of literature.7-8, tunnels under the fortress.