Over my long weekend, my parents and I headed to the little known city of Datong in nearby Shanxi province. We took and overnight train, which was another new experience for Mom and Dad, but pretty familiar for me by now. Although usually it is a bad idea to listen to anyone offering taxis, hotels or tours outside the train station, I had done my research and knew that CITS, a large and reliable travel agency in China, often sent someone to wait for tourists at the train stations. Since we had a limited time in Datong and the few sights we wanted to see were all a long drive away, we decided to go to the CITS office to see what they could offer us. They called an English speaking driver for the day, and we were off.
First stop, the Hanging Temple.
The temple, built into the cliffside, is about an hour's drive away from Datong through rural Shanxi. The area is very poor. Most people are either subsistence farmers or coal miners. The scenery along the way was beautiful, with jagged cliffs and hills, but peppered with rundown villages and cave homes. It's definitely a far cry from the bright lights and wide avenues of Wangfujing, where my parents had stayed in Beijing.
The temple itself isn't too well known. Although Datong is in the process of becoming a tourist destination (the center of the city was recently torn down to build a replica of the "old city" that used to be there), it hasn't really caught on yet. There were a few other tourists at the temple, but not too many.
Did I mention my mom is afraid of heights? I'm not sure I still believe that, after the Great Wall and climbing up into the Hanging Temple. I think the ski jump is next!
We climbed up to the temple and walked through it, which didn't take very long. It's pretty small, which makes sense considering how much work it must have taken to build it into the cliff. Even so, it was one of the highlights of my parents' visit to China, and one of my favorite trips as well.
After seeing the Hanging Temple, we stopped for lunch with our driver and continued on to the Yungang Buddhist Grottoes, another hour's drive away. These grottoes, with over 50,000 statues, were carved 1,500 years ago. They were really impressive, even though all three of us have an admitted ignorance about Buddhism and didn't know the significance of anything.
I'm having internet problems right now, and it has suddenly decided not to let me upload any more photos, so you'll just have imagine the Yungang Grottoes for now. Or Google them, I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment