Our eventual exit from Beijing was a stressful affair. We were at a nearby shopping centre buying some food for the bus and with time running short attempted to get a taxi back to our hostel. We really should have known better. The hostel was really only round the corner, but would the driver take us? Would he hell. Instead, with the minutes counting down we had to walk back up the road as fast as we could, faster than I've ever walked before, which still took 10 minutes. Then, with our bags, we tried to hail one outside to take us to the bus station. Another five fruitless minutes passed as the time of our departure approached. Finally one stopped for us. I told him to go quickly; we have a bus to catch. He went as leisurely as you could imagine, with us sitting in the back helpless as departure time came...and went. Coming towards the bus station he even stopped at the top of the road, and wouldn't go any closer, leaving me to dump my stuff with Russell and sprint down to the station hoping that it had been delayed somehow. It hadn't. It never is when you want it to. Seeing my disappointment, and hearing my wheezing, the girl at the check-in desk took my ticket, tapped on her computer a little and gave me a new ticket for the next bus in an hour, at no extra cost. Fantastic. What a contrast. I saw Russell struggling into the forecourt, carrying both our backpacks, with a look on his face that told me if one more person said 'Hello Hotel!' to him he'd have had to be pulled off them. He was as relieved as I was with the good news and we celebrated with an ice-cream. We just had to get out of that city. Beijing sounds great in theory but in practice it's hellish. Besides, Russell only had two weeks in China and we had plenty to see. To be delayed another day through arsey taxi drivers would have killed us.
And so we were on our way. Our bus took us on a route through the hills to the north-west of Beijing, with the Great Wall lining the peaks along the way. Leaving all that behind the landscape soon changed and became more barren. No fields here. Just grassland, and sometimes not even that much. It was a harsh contrast to what I'd seen elsewhere. We were treated to a beautiful glowing sunset over the distant mountains and five hours later pulled into Datong, Shanxi Province.Datong is an industrial city, with coal-mining and coal-burning seeming to make up the most of it. It was a poor city, but it was normal. For all the dust and the bad smells (I swear I haven't smelt so many chemicals in the air since A-level chemistry mishaps), I felt relief in being here. It was my kind of city. I'd never been there before, but it was familiar territory. I knew what to do, where to go for certain things and what to expect here. After days of being lost in the faceless confusion of tourist deception in Beijing, I felt at home again. Besides the industry, Datong has a few sights of national importance, and the next morning we began our tour of them.
We'd signed up for the CITS (China International Travel Service) tour, and were sharing a taxi with a french couple. First up was the Hanging Monastery. This ancient building had been built into the side of a cliff 50 metres above the bottom of a gorge about 1400 years ago. Like most things in China it has been rebuilt over the years but is still quite amazing. The vertical poles that look like they support the structure actually serve little structural function. In fact you can reach out and wobble them, which is a little disturbing. What does hold the thing up are big poles buried deep into the rock behind the cliff for at least half their length, upon which the rest of the structure is built.
It was interesting to walk through. It was/is a temple, although the worship of money (see above pic - a money counter taking pride of place within one of the restored rooms) had long since replaced the worship of other deities it seemed. The tourist infrastructure was well developed here, and the river had even been dammed up to leave enough room for a car park, restaurants and shops. A little soulless, but as long as you didn't look down from the thing, it was alright. This is usually what I carefully avoid in my photos, but you need to see it to believe it sometimes.
We ate our lunch there, before beginning the long drive back through the dry valleys to Datong and beyond to see another one of the big three Buddhist grotto complexes in China, and my second, the Yungang caves.
In my opinion this complex surpassed the Longmen caves for quality and quantity of sculptures and even had several chambers that contained well-preserved murals and painted carvings. Our guide took us through them quickly but informatively, pointing out the scene where Buddha was born from his mother's right armpit and all the other stages of his life in one amazing brightly coloured cave.
The decoration was truly astounding, and between us we must have taken a few hundred photos. To think that most of these caves are well over 1500 years old is incredible. It was tight seeing them all before we had to leave, and I wished we had more time, but was still well worth it. For those of you that couldn't be there, this is just a taste of that experience:
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