Advertisement
Published: October 19th 2009
Leaving the caves
Much dust! A storm was on its way so it was ridiculously windy.I'm giving this site one more chance (to be fair, I think it's the computer I'm using that's making all the troubles, but I'd rather blame somebody else), partly because this blog has got some awesome things that we saw in it, and partly because I'm going to be annoyed if I can't get everything written out.
I'm really hoping that I can get this to go onto the database as being in Datong - because everything I've read has given the city a bad review and I want to give it a bit of a better review. Honestly, the city's pretty ordinary, but NOBODY comes here to visit the city. If they do, they're nuts. It's like going to any smaller cities - why should you expect every corner to have something awesome. It's a place people live. Admittedly they live in quite a bit more dust and coal powder than anybody else I've ever met, but it's what they're used to. There is actually a really good noodle restaurant a few minutes cab ride from the railway station called East Wheat (I think) - it's a chain but they do great noodles and they're really clean and our
taxi driver said he goes there at least 3 times a week. Good prices too.
But that's just if you're in the city for a night and have nothing to do, like we did because we arrived at about 7:00 last night and just wanted some food and a bed.
Anyway, all of that is unimportant, just some trivia if you're ever here.
The real reason you come to Datong is to visit the hanging monastery and the Grottoes. Both of them are the most impressive things I've seen in China, maybe only second to the Terracotta Warriors, but pretty close. When we arrived last night we were chased by a guy who wanted to drive us out to the sights for RMB300, which we were told was a good price, but he seemed a bit dodgy. Another guy offered us the same package for the same price, and then dropped it to 280, but he looked much more respectable so we said we'd go with him. He even had a DVD that he'd play of the grottoes for us on the way. This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made the whole
Inside the Hanging Monastery
View of the mountains from the monastery time we've been here. He was fantastic. He came on time, promised not to take us anywhere except for where we wanted to go to, and knew everything about the city and the surrounds.
It turns out that he's pretty well devoted himself to promoting Datong to the Chinese and foreigners. He loves this place, and he knows so much stuff. And he's so nice, he kept on stopping along the highways and pointing to things that we couldn't see so that we could take photos. On the way out to the Wang residence the other day at Pingyao, the trip out was very uneventful, there was no real scenery or anything, until just a few minutes before you arrived there. On the way out to the monastery, though, the scenery is amazing, you're almost instantly in the middle of a mountainous place, whith huge chasms cut through the landscape, and every few kms there were little caves cut into the cliff faces where people live. All the way out there there were horse-drawn carts carrying crops from one place to another, herds of goats walking in the way on the road, and then little villages made out of
the most basic mud huts. It was such a perfect drive, I loved it. Another kind of cool thing on the drive out there is you get a panorama of a mountain range. If you squint your eyes a bit and allow yourself to believe what you're told, the range looks like buddha sleeping - it's pretty close actually, but you need to be told before you can see it.
He wanted us to go to the monastery first because the sun hides behind the mountains pretty early in the day, and he wanted us to see it with the sun on it. As it was, the monastery was already being taken over by shadow, but most of it was in the sun. By the time we left it was completely covered by the shadows so I'm glad we got there in time. This monastery is incredible. It was built a few hundred years ago as a monastery for the Buddhists. It's famous for being the only Buddhist monastery that has three separate buddhist philosophies represented in the one complex. I'm not interested in the Buddhism part of things, but the way the building is made is awesome, it
Hanging monastery
Looking up a the monastery from the entrance - two good looking people got in the way. looks like it's just held up by stilts on the cliff face, and when you're in the actualy building and look down, you can see that those stilts are only sitting on a square foot of level ground, and they tend to move a bit with people walking above. They do have supporting beams that have been embedded into the cliff face,and the stilts are less integtral to the structure than those beams, but they still have a part, and they definitely look like it's all that's holding the place up!
It's very popular with the Chinese tourists, so it's not the sort of place you're going to be able to have a relaxing bit of solitude, but it's definitely worth the visit.
After that he drove us to the grottoes. I'm going to give a very vague brief rundown of the history of this place because it's cool. I can't promise it's true, it's just what I remember reading, so if my memory or the source isn't reliable, it's probably not true...who cares?
Basically, one emperor really got into Buddhism, he supported the building of temples and monasteries and all those sorts of things, so the
Drive back from the Monastery
Little set of caves in the cliff where people live religion flourished in and around Datong. A few years later this emperor died, and his successor was the opposite. He hated religion, and instead of just being a bit oppressive, he decided the only way to deal with the issue was to kill every monk and religious person he could find. He burned the temples, destroyed the monasteries, anything he could get his hands on he got rid of. I don't think he lasted a very long time. His successor was more like the first guy, and he was ashamed of what happened, so, as a sort of apology, he had these caves dug. So they started working on it, where money was simply not an issue. 30m tall buddhas are all over the place, some of them plated in gold, others just dug out of the rock. The building went on for a while, but then this emperor died, and the next one didn't really see the point of it all, so the money dried up. The people wanted it finished though, so they finished the construction themselves, albeit without the same money or skills, so as the caves went on they became less and less ostentatious.
They
Buddha
Kate & Lloyd - this thing was HUGE are impressive though, there's 46 of the caves, and the first 20 are incredible. The rest are obviously cool too, but not so good because the money had dried up by that stage. I'll just leave it to the photos to show what it all looks like.
They're redeveloping the whole are at the moment - so I guess this time next year it will be a different looking place. One negative aspect of the building work is that it stirs up so much dust that it's pretty unpleasant to be in the parking lot, but that didn't last long.
Anyway, that's all! This will probably be the last blog, we're home in not too many days from now, so if we do anything cool before we go home, you'll just have to ask us about it!!!
Hope everybody's been well, can't wait to see everybody at home!!! I also can't wait to see things that aren't covered in a layer of dust!
Beijing's been great, we've had a fantastic time. I think if we did it again we put a bit more travelling in, but that's because we've seen most of the things we wanted
Huge Buddha again
this time with us to see in Beijing now, there wouldn't be much point in spending forever here again! I'd love to come again, we've made some fantastic friends who will hopefully come and visit us at home soon, and on that note, I might be calling on all my non-Brisbane friends to find some accommodation for them! I'm sure we'll find something. OK that's all, hope you've enjoyed the blogs, sorry I've been a bit slack with getting them up in time, this one's only 3 days overdue at least!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.132s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0618s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
