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Published: September 18th 2008
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Hanging Temple
It was emptier when Dan Cruikshank went Hi all!
OK, going back, way back in time! After having to leave Beijing a little later than anticipated we had to change our nice comfy sleeper tickets into slightly less comfy (but considerably cheaper) hard seat tickets. We arrived wind and sand blown (if you ever have to take a hard seat don’t get one by the window!) 6 hours later in the inner Mongolian city of Datong.
After fruitlessly trying to locate a hostel we had found on the internet we ended up back at the none too pleasant hotel adjacent to the train station, where the other westerners who had been on the same train went straight away! Still, we had arranged our day trip to the Hanging Temple and Yungang Caves through the CITS on arrival so were still on track. An evening exploration told us that finding the other hostel (or pretty much anywhere else at all to stay) would have been better than staying near the station.
Up early the following day for the tour and off for the free breakfast at the hotel to set us up for the day's tour, however, rather than the big buffet we had dreamt of,
Buddha
quite a big buddha we were greeted at the door of the restaurant by the 'chef' who handed us a hard boiled egg and directed us to some dodgy looking yellowish soup, steamed buns and noodles which looked like they had been sitting there for days. We weren't the only ones who were unimpressed, as we met some other westerners at the breakfast table and we all decided to give it a miss and find some street food instead!
Breakfast in hand, we then spent ages hanging around at the CITS office whilst they tried to sell us train tickets etc for a huge mark up before we set off. The guide was really good and told us lots about Datong itself whilst we sat in traffic, unfortunately the traffic lasted longer than her knowledge and we had to retrace our steps and find another exit out of town, our driver seemed pretty confident at the start but it soon became evident that he had no idea where he was going at all and as our minibus started to take turnings through fields and down dirt roads, stopping every time we saw another human being to ask directions we were all getting a
Jaozi!
Dan shows the locals how it's done! ish! little nervous. We arrived, 4 hours later (it was supposed to be a 2 hour journey!) to find the temple mobbed and not at all like when Dan Cruikshank visited it on the telly! It was still a pretty inspiring sight; the temple clinging to the rock face some 50m above the river and the journey there (once we found the right road) through the mountains was very cool.
We had quite a while to peruse the views on the way from the temple as there was a massive traffic jam, mainly caused by terrible Chinese driving! Nobody here seems to have any patience and will cross to the wrong side of the road to go around another vehicle, that’s fine on a reasonable road, but on a small mountain pass with big lorries travelling both ways you tend to block off said wrong lane and it ends in gridlock with everybody out of their cars shouting at each other. For about 2 hours. Hmmm.
Still, we managed to get through, eventually, by now 4 hours late and having missed any kind of stop for food or toilets we arrived at the caves with not much time to
get around them. Again our guide was great and did all she could. The Caves themselves are incredible, massive Buddha statues carved from the top down virtually in darkness with the walls covered in thousand upon thousand of smaller images of various stages of Buddha’s life and journey to enlightment. Well worth the trip, traffic jams or not, one of those things that look great in pictures but nothing compared to actually standing in front of it. Back to Datong and whilst some members of the group berate the CITS man looking for some money back (quite pointlessly as he quite obviously didn’t care) the poor guide lady was begging people not to make a fuss as she would probably lose her job, we slipped away quietly and got an early night!
Most people go to Datong just for the caves and temple and don’t stay. That’s understandable as it’s just a grey industrial town really but we stayed an extra day because we were still feeling a little unwell and the full day on the bus to Wutai Shan seemed a bit too much. We were hugely rewarded. The people of Datong were just about the friendliest people we have met anywhere so far, smiling, saying hello, offering to help us in shops, directing us to their nearest favourite restaurant for lunch (turned out to be a KFC!) and just generally being lovely.
That evening we came across the main town square, there was a clothing market, some food stands, and loads of people just hanging out, chatting, playing games and enjoying themselves, we hung around for a bit and ended up had our picture taken with various random locals (something you need to get used to if you plan to hang around in China outside of the major cities we have since discovered) and half the student population came over to practice their English and give us their phone numbers for if we ever need any help. After a while playing Jaozi (like a big coloured shuttlecock which you kick around in a group like a hacky-sack, very entertaining) with an ever increasing group of people, we bid adieu (or Zai Jian) to our new friends and headed back with a spring in our step feeling privileged to have been able to have met such nice people.
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