Nuns on the bus....

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We arrived in Datong at 7am after a rather 'interesting' night spent getting next to no sleep on the sleeper train from Beijing. Somewhat wearily we went in search of the station travel agency that the LP described as being really helpful. We found it easily (....it was full of westerners) and within 30 mins we were booked onto a tour for the day, had a hotel room organised and were sat eating brekky. At 9am we were on a bus meeting our guide and tour group... yep, after nearly three weeks in China spent actively avoiding the follow the flag tour groups here I was on one. Ahh the shame ;0) It was a great day though and considering how tired we both felt it was the only way we could have done it... trying to get enough enthusiasm to get ourselves around independently would have been too much.... sleeping would have been an all too appealing alternative!! Plus I have to admit that the guide was very good - we learnt far more about the about the sights and the local area than we would have done had we done a DIY tour.

Our first destination was the Yungang caves, some 16km out of Datong. The caves contain over 50,000 Buddhist statues, largely carved during the Northern Wei dynasty (460-494 AD) when Datong was the dynasty capital. Further caves were developed during the Liao dynasty (11th and 12th centuries) and the Qing dynasty. The caves vary in their content - one contains a 17m high seated Buddha, another contains a 15-meter-high two-story pagoda pillar, with carvings on the pagoda walls and the sides of the cave illustrating the life of Buddha from birth to his attainment of nirvana. One cave shows influences from Hinduism with depictions of Shiva and Vishnu. Whilst some have fairly plain exteriors the entrance to other caves is highly decorative with front pillars and figures playing musical instruments. Some caves are far better preserved than others - the carvings are sandstone and prone to the effects of water erosion and pollution created by the coal mine next door. The Shanxi province is the power horse of China.. at least in the sense that @1/3 of China's coal is produced here... something that was very evident as we travelled around the next few days. We saw endless towns with chimneys bellowing out smoke and horizons that seemed to be continuously covered in a sooty haze. An interesting addition was the donkey and cart... I guess the donkey is the equivalent of the water buffalo that I saw so many off further south. More often than not they were carrying coal... but I guess that was for the locals own consumption because we also saw endless large trucks thundering along.

From the caves we had a 2 hour drive to our second stop, the hanging monastery. It was built into the cliffs @ 1400 years ago and consists of a number of rooms, connected by a series of walkways and ladders and built into natural hollows in the cliff face. It is now @50m above ground level, although it is believed that it would have been higher when it was first built.... an to be honest then probably would have been more impressive.

After a full day of sightseeing we went back to the hotel gleefully thinking of sleep and hot showers, got in the lift, went up a bit... then the lift stopped and the lights went off. We were pretty sure that there'd been a power failure (they seem to be reasonably common here...) and the building work going on at the hotel meant the possibility of someone going through a power cable was pretty high... Nevertheless we found the alarm bell and even better a phone with an emergency number using the light from Ann's moby phone. Ann rang the number and said 'Help'... the person on the other end replied 'No english'! We weren't giving up though and to make sure we weren't forgotten we resorted to the more old fashioned method of banging on the lift doors - at least it seemed like a really good idea until the doors started to open enough for us to see that we were part way between floors. We weren't tooo sure what would happen when the power came back on... would the doors open completely?? or close again? Fortunately we didn't find out... the receptionist had heard our banging and commandeered two builders to prise the doors open and pull us out!! We walked the rest of the way up to our room.... although we were soon back in the lift again... well, there's only soo many times you want to walk up 5 floors ;0)

The next day we were up early and on a mini bus to Wutai Shan, which means five terraced mountains and is one of the sacred Buddhist mountain ranges in China. The aim of the game on these buses seems to be to squeeze as many chain smoking Chinese on as possible - once all the 'seats' are filled, low stalls are produced for people to sit in the aisle... and it's amazing how many people can be crammed in to the aisle, although Ann and I created a bit off havoc with our bags - the bus had no boot space so they had to go in the aisle too. The scenery on this journey is supposed to be amazing, but it rained heavily almost all the way so we didn't get to see much of it. The constant rain combined with the odd bit of fog and lot a of winding mountain roads meant that what should have been a 4 hour journey turned into a 6 hour chain smoking epic - it was raining so the windows remained firmly shut. :0( The journey did provide some entertainment in watching how the locals interacted with each other though... in particular how they would hold out until the very end before moving their bags off the seat or moving over to let someone sit next to them. We also had two Buddhist nuns on the bus...so you can imagine that when we came round a sharp bend on a high mountain pass and had a near collision with a coal truck coming the other way (the truck soo would have won had it been any closer), I had flashbacks to all those Airplane films I watched when I was younger.... the one's where when you see the nun and the pregnant women on the plane you just know there's gonna be a crash. Fortunately I couldn't see any pregnant women on our bus so figured we'd be ok to Wutai Shan ;0)

When we arrived in Taihuai, the monastic village at the centre of the five peaks of Wutai Shan, it was still raining but we found a hotel and started working our way through the monasteries and temples..... of which there were a lot. First up was Luohou Temple, noted in the LP for having a huge lotus flower, the petals of which open and close. We found the flower and it was here that we got chatting to a monk who was keen to practise his English on us. We left him and went on to another temple, but the continuous rain and cold meant we didn't stay too long. Instead we went in search of some hot tea and ended up in a restaurant just along from where we were staying. Off course we managed to pick one of the few in town that didn't have either an english menu or anyone who spoke a sliver of english - but it turned out to be one of the most entertaining meals I've had! Lots of cups of tea later we decided to order some food... the first challenge being getting across my vegetarianism. That done we then had to order.. a wee bit of a challenge when you can't read the menu and the staff don't speak english! The waitress was sooo lovely... she ran into the kitchen and came back with some greens and through the Mandarin Phrasebook combined with a pantomime of chopping, stirring and pointing at other peoples food we somehow managed to order some noodle soup and stir fried veg. She also ran up the street and bought back a guy who spoke a little english and through him we managed to order a tomato dish. In the mean time the rest of the restaurant guests had gotten involved... either through the miming chopping game or by being fascinated with the Mandarin phrasebook. A nights entertainment and it only cost @ 80p each!

Back at the hotel we decided to get an early night and catch up on our lost zzz's - plus it was freezing... poor Ann had 3 layers of clothes on, a sleeping bag and a duvet. Unfortunately it wasn't a great night - there was a huge storm which kept us awake with the sound of smashing windows and then thwarted our plans for a nice hot morning shower.....another day, another powercut. Ahh well, the upside was that we woke up to see snow on the mountain tops... made for some good photo's at least ;0)

We started our second day with a stiff climb up the steps of Dailuo Peak to the monastery near the top. On the way up some Chinese girls actually paid someone else to have their photo taken with me! The views back over the town were great but the lower steps had quite a few people begging, which isn't something I've really seen in China until now. We met a guy here who told us that visiting this monastery is a pilgrimage for those that can't make it round to the 5 sacred peaks themselves (there are 5 statues here that represent the 5 peaks.. so feeling suitably spiritual we headed back down to the town and went shopping at the market ;0) The market had a lot of Buddhist paraphernalia and 'antiques'... not sure quite how antique some of the antiques were though!!

In the afternoon we happened across Wanfo Temple - we hadn't planned to go to this one but discovered it after following some crowds and the sounds of music. Inside the temple grounds there was a Shanxi Opera performance going on, lots of colour and people just milling around. We took the opportunity to sit on some steps and inconspicuously take photo's of the locals..... a little hard when you're a bit of a tourist attraction yourself!! But we spent a good half hour sitting there watching the locals and trying to work out the difference between the red robed monks, the orange robed monks, the grey robed monks, the red and orange robed monks..... The funniest thing was seeing which ones were 'locals' and which one's were tourists (well, I guess pilgrim would be a more correct term...) just like us! We'd been trying to take sneaky pic's of one particular monk standing infront of us when he turned round and beckoned for us to follow him. We then had a rather amusing time as he gave us a wee guided tour around the temple... I say amusing because of course he spoke no English and us no Chinese. But we followed him round the different halls of the Temple as he waved at different features. We ended up in one particular hall and having walked round the Buddha statue in the appropriate direction (clockwise of course) he then bought us to the alter where people had made offerings. He had a quick word with the person looking after the hall and then took two apples from the alter and gave them to us. We were a little perplexed at first.. was the idea that we put them back on the alter or?? More miming and it became clear that they were a present...... which provoked the conundrum of what do you do with an apple that was placed by a
pilgrim on an alter and then given to you by a monk?? Do you eat it? Throw it away? or???

We ended the day at what turned out to be one of our favourite temples... Yuan Zhao. It wasn't the biggest, most decorative or most important.... in fact several tour groups had walked straight passed it to get to another... which is probably how we ended up going in. It was how I imagine a temple/monastery would be.... quiet, apart from when the monks started chanting, and peaceful. It was the end of the day and apart from one or two other tourists it was us and the monks... we sat in the sun watching them sweeping, chatting and going about their chores, and they watched us right back.

Next up walled Ming cities and Terracotta armies....

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