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Published: September 25th 2009
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Grand Buddha
Favorite Cave Let me just throw this out there. Blogging is very difficult for a person like me. Most nights I say to myself…okay, I am going to sit down and blog about my last 3 cities, lock myself up in a room, put on some mood lighting and delve into a journey of memory…. but then a cute girl comes down to sit next to me and I practice my knowledge of Mandarin. I am now the proud user of vocab such as ‘shwi ga’ which I say with enthusiasm while pointing to myself(means handsome guy). For all who are curious, this is now my chat up line. It works 70% of the time…everytime. Girls dig my alpha-maleness, something which I have been trying to work on in America and fail miserably. Or somebody asks me to go to hotpot, go to a temple or learn how to play mahjong, I am not one to turn any of these offers down so my apologies for these being way out of date.
My second stop on my journey from Beijing was Datong. LP defines Datong in North Eastern China as a city losing all “chances of winning any beauty pagents” due to
the surrounding coal mines. My good friend Todd from Canada (who stands in my book as a far greater source of worldly knowledge than the Lonely Planet) asks “I have been to Datong, I didn’t think anybody went there. Is it still a dismal, dusty, smoky city?”. Well to answer both comments, yes, Datong is not very pleasant and I must agree with these sentiments as well as with my taxi driver for the day, Shao Ma who simply said “Datong BAD, Beijing GOOD” and this coming from a man who was born and has lived his whole life in Datong.
On the train ride from Beijing, I experienced my first conversation with a beautiful girl aged anywhere between 16 and 33(I really couldn’t tell)
Girl - “Where you go”
Me - “Datong”
Girl - “You speak Chinese?”
Me - “No”
Girl - “How you know where to get off train?”
Me - “You can help me right?”
Girl - “Sorry, I not understand, bye”
As she got up this promptly ended our conversation. This can only get better I thought. However, as we pulled into a dusty station with high rise apartment buildings almost invisible due to
Creativity
The description of characters with in the rock was astonishing the constant dust/dirt/grim storm that seems to devour Datong, in my gut I knew I was there. This was one of many Chinese cities under heavy and constant construction. The work is hard and as we all wait in our offices for the clock to tick to 5pm, this is not the case for many working Chinese. Work at 7pm, work at 2am, work at 7am…it never stops.
I had come here for a day to witness two Buddhist wonders on the outskirts of the city known as the
Yungang Caves and the
Hanging Monestary. The caves are a series of 45 caves which vary in size, detail, creativity and all are works of art. I would keep reminding myself that this was stone I was looking at, one of the hardest mediums to work with as an artist. The caves date back as the oldest Buddhist carvings in China and I was not disappointed. As it turned out, the oldest caves were some of my favorite. A 24ft high Buddha took the cake, as well as the 1000-Buddha where, you guessed it, a 1000 small sized Buddha’s stare at you from above…within a cave…carved out of rock…remember, ROCK.
I remember I was quite pleased with myself when I broke a rock apart to make a smoother stone to skip on the water with, that was the extent of my rock skills. After a couple of hours of enduring more Chinese people wanting to take pictures of me, I hopped back to the taxi with Shao Ma and we made our merry way. A brief highlight into the drive with this crazed 25 year old was on a rock ledge with death on one side, a bus on the other and us overtaking this bus with an oncoming bulldozer. Shao Ma used what I will call the ‘squeeze’ maneuver where as you squeeze as close to the bus as you can without being hit by the truck…while on a rock ledge. “Phew” he said as we made it with at least ½ an inch left of spare. “Phew” was not exactly my response. Mine had many more swears.
The Hanging Monestary sells exactly what it advertises, a monestary…and it’s hanging. Not exactly hanging, but on stilts. The sight is an absolute marvel. Walking up to the top on stairways built only for a Chinese monk(do not come
Newer Cave
By newer, I mean 1400 years ago, not 1700 years ago here if your BMI is anywhere in the red), you stare at a building built completely in the middle of a cliff. The structure itself is quite small and a jogger could run around the whole place unsafely in 3 minutes flat, but was I mystified. If I could pray anywhere, it would be there. “Ow wait, where do you pray again. Ow right, yes, in a church, in a suburb. Yeah, I pray in a Monastery that is built into a cliff…yeah, it’s alright I guess.” Trip well done. After agreeing on a price with Shao Ma to take me home, which was probably way too much, we made our dangerous journey back. If I can only say one thing, he got me back to the hotel in pronto time.
Datong is also the city where I will remember my first meal where communication broke down. No waitress could speak one word of English and unlike Beijing who have gotten used to dealing with pesky travelers; Datong has simply not seen enough of the backpacker crowd come by. Yet after realizing that handing me a menu of Mandarin symbols was not going to work, we started to take the
‘let the foreigner walk around the restaurant and point to other tables food to get what they are having’ strategy. I felt skeptical as not commonly did I let my Outback patrons choose their meals based on surveying the nearest tables, ultimately in Beijing, I would even expect a few huffs and puffs, but not in Datong. At each table encountered, the crowd lit up as we approached and laughed and joked about our situation(in a nice way). As we fumbled through using pointing, comparisons of sizes, the nature of truly just wanting to get me fed(and the hell out of there) was genuine and unfiltered. And what a meal it was. It may have taken 4 hours, but by the end of the experience, every table came over to shake my hand as they left and say the odd ‘Hallo’. Never have I felt so popular, not even in elementary school(my popularity highlight years).
My first overnight train will take me to Pingyao tomorrow with its finely preserved walled city. As for Datong, I write, you are not so bad. I just hope that the people who have endured a city of neverending change will at some
point get a break.
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Wes
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Keep the blogs coming man! Hope you're having a blast!