ReidaBlog

Once back in Beijing we immediately begain planning our next trip. Based on time and budget constraints we decided on Datong.

Datong is a city of 4-5 million located about 6 hours Southwest of Beijing via train. A pretty easy journey to see some impressive sights. In fact Datong has 2 of Lonely Planets “must see” sights (out of about 25 for all of China). We would hit both of them.

Since it was Chinese New Year we did a bit of planning ahead (Chinese style - meaning that we bought our train tickets and booked our hotel room a day in advance). Leaving in plenty of time to catch our train we got to the station with an easy 30 minutes to spare…only to realize that the train left from the West train station and I had taken us to the Main train station. Doh! So we finally got a taxi with about 10 minutes left and rushed to the other station. The taxi driver kept pointing to the clock and saying “your train leaves in 9 minutes”.
Then “your train leaves in 8 minutes”.
Then “your train leaves in 7 minutes”.
You get the point.
Needless to say he wasn’t helping my stress levels.

So we get to the station about 10 minutes late to find our train is delayed. Yay! Now calming down we settled in for a pretty easy journey.

Caidy and Torrie enjoy luxury travel in the hard sleeper class.

Chinese trains have 4 classes:

Soft Sleeper - which has 4 bunks in a private room
Hard sleeper - six bunks in a room open to the aisle
Reserved - sitting up but with reserved seats
Your screwed - try to find space

Our train was pretty empty (although the one on the way back was full). But I knew a guy who could only get a standing room ticket on a 26 hour train ride. He actually stood most of the way since floor space, etc. was taken by others with standing room tickets. I also wish we had gotten pictures of the boarding process…involves going through windows when the queue at the door gets too long.

The journey was pretty cool, got a nice view of the country side and even got to see a real working steam locomotive. Fun fact for the day is that the Datong train factory made the last one around 1975 so there are still a bunch in service. Did I mention that Datong is the coal capitol of China? This of course shows up everywhere: black smoke coming from every house, black clouds, black snow, even coal statues. Anyway…

After arriving we were immediately racially profiled by the local CITS guy and set up for a tour of the cloud ridge caves and hanging temple for the next day. The deal was that if they could get 5 or more people they’d arrange a guide if not they would arrive a taxi and reduce the price.

The first night was pretty mellow so we grabbed some dinner and checked into the hotel.

Me, Torrie and Caidy.

The next morning we returned to the CITS office to find only one other person, a british guy traveling alone, so we all ended up piling into a taxi and heading to the caves.

Not far out of Datong the place was about a 1km long sandstone cliff with about 100 caves and 50,000 buddhas. We were the only foreigners there as far as I could see and it showed. Kids would point, people would yell out “hello!” and then giggle, and of course we got stared at. A lot. People were as friendly as normal though and the weather was great so on to the pictures.

Torrie, John, Caidy, and Me

View of the main section. Most of the caves you can walk into although some are gated.

Buddha says how.

I think it was a holy day of some sort. Lots of people with incense and praying. Not to mention the big fire right next to the “no fires” sign.

I think the biggest Buddha was about 17m tall but there were several like this one that were pretty big. In total supposed to be 50,000 but I only counted 48K.

四 外国人 and a buddha.

Many of the caves were pretty intricate and a few still had color left.

Always on the lookout for fashion photography. Matching, nicely done.

After the caves we drove up into the mountains to see the hanging monestary. Barely surviving the high-speed mountain drive to get there I was pretty impressed with the result. And once again there weren’t many other people. I guess that is the plus side to the cold weather and holdiay travel.

The hanging temple sits right along a river and below a modern damn. Apparently it had been washed away a couple of times in floods so each time it was built a little higher.

Now it is a good 40-50 meters above the river.

Although you can (and we did) climb up another 100m or so to the damn and get a pretty good view.

Overall a pretty impressive place. Not somewhere I’d actually want to live though.

See it’s not just my apartment.

And it is only after you climb up that you notice the poles holding the place up…no nails.

Steve Erwin’s got nothing.

Buddist hollywood squares.

There is a story behind this picture, just too long to relate here.

Boat, ice, China.

Getting back to Datong we decide to cross the garbage pile to get some char.

After accidently ordering and then un-ordering chicken heads we wait for the surliest cook ever to finish our lamb kebabs.

Heading home. A day or two later Torrie and Caidy hitched a ride back to the US. Soon after they left we had the first nice weather in a month. Not that I’m blaming my visitors, just a bit suspicious is all. I guess we’ll find out when Jeff gets here in a week or so.

After hitting the sites in Beijing we decided to visit the Terracotta warriors in Xian.

In 1974 some farmers were digging a well when they stumbled across what was probably the archaeological find of the century, the tomb of China’s very first emperor. Like the pharaohs in Egypt he was focused on providing for himself in the afterlife. Not only did he have an enormous tomb (which by the way looks suspiciously like a pyramid even though it is still buried) built but he also constructed an army to take with him. In his case he had every soldier in his real army created from clay and then buried with him. So what the farmers dug up and is still being unearthed is a bunch of unique life-size toy soldiers all arrayed for battle. After he died and was buried everyone involved was killed and the tomb was buried. It stayed lost for quite a while.

As a side note, legend has it that he also created rivers of mercury in his tomb and tests have shown that the area around the tomb is contaminated by very high levels of mercury. Most of the tomb is still buried but what has been dug up (and the archaeological work is still going on) is pretty impressive.

If you go skip the crappy dance show and just check out the warriors. Or not…whatever.

Me and Bob

The main hall is pretty impressive. This is just one part of what has been restored to date. There are several other buildings and apparently a lot more that is still buried. A complete army of life-size statues.

But I’m pretty sure I could take them.

They also had real weapons, chariots, horses, etc. Of course clay statues that are buried tend to break so in some of the un-restored areas you can see them smashed into pieces. This is probably why they are still working on the site 30 years later.

In addition to seeing the warriors (which are about an hour out of town by car) the city of Xian is itself pretty cool. It is one of the few remaining cities that still has its ancient walls intact.

Me and Caidy at the city walls.

The bell tower right outside our hotel. I really enjoyed the city - I wandered the streets at night and they were packed with people. Much more like the China I imagine than the reality of Beijing.

The sun. Got to love pollution.

We didn’t get to spend as much time as we would have liked since I had an appointment back in Beijing. But before I rush out of here a couple of signs from the trip.

It actually says: “Slippery path, please be careful.” Even I know that. But let’s just say that the translations we saw weren’t all that impressive.

And this one says something like: “Safety railing: don’t climb, don’t sit.” But I think I like “Here is dangerous” better.

Caption 1: The emperor was built on stilts? Huh?
Caption 2: “chi” means “eat”…Oliver insert joke here.

So the day that Eric and I arrive back in Beijing (Oliver flew directly home from Bangkok) I had two more friends come to visit. Torrie and Caidy were planning to stay for around 10 days. We were going to start by doing the typical stuff in Beijing and then play it by ear. The problem was that they arrived on the first day of Chinese New Year.

Traveling in China is normally pretty easy except for 3 weeks out of the year and most especially one particular week which had just started when they got here. In China the New Year celebration is sort of like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one. Everyone travels back home, hangs out with the family, and gives gifts. And since the government mandates that everyone gets this time off you have about 600 million people traveling during the holiday.

Just to put it in perspective over the holiday period the Chinese government estimated that about 2 billion long distant trips occurred. For which they ran an additional 11,000 trains. Note that this is not train trips but actually trains. As in the long things that go on the tracks. What exactly the government is doing with an excess inventory of 11,000 trains is another question.

Now for all these trips you can only buy tickets 4 days in advance. In my opinion this is just insane. So not only don’t you know if you can actually get a ticket but when you take the train home you don’t know if you can get one back. More on train travel in the next post just wanted to point out that this is probably not the most ideal time to travel in China.

Any one know where the fireworks were invented?

No way to express how crazy the first night of the holiday is…I guess you could take July 4th and multiply by about 1000. Add the fact that this is the first time in years that fireworks were legal in Beijing and you had a night that can only be experienced. I took a video using Eric’s camera and I really wish I had the audio track (hint, hint).

Anyway it is a good way to be introduced to Beijing. Now moving on.

Last day of the trip for Eric and the first for Torrie.

Panjiayuan is the big market that sells Chinese “stuff”. However it is only open on the weekend and the only weekend day we planned to have in Beijing was the first Sunday. Notice that there aren’t a lot of people? Now take a look at the picture from the last time I went.

This would be both a problem and blessing throughout their visit. Stuff having to do with daily life was closed. But on the plus side the tourist sites were pretty empty.

So off we go to the Forbidden City.

Me and Torrie.

Caidy and Torrie at Tian’anmen. Notice the stares. Blond girls in China, just ask Sara.

Does this count as the government officially taking notice?

So the rest of the family including the wife is just waiting for this guy to get his picture taken. I don’t mind this aspect of China (of course they’re not normally asking for my picture) as it is just people being friendly. It gets much weirder when we went out to the countryside. But that is a story for the next post.

Caidy pretending to get her picture taken while I capture an outfit.

I’ve commented on the traditional Chinese solution to the diaper problem before but listening to Torrie and Caidy remark on it inspired me to post one more.

So the next day I get them a car and send them to the great wall just like I had done for Eric and Oliver. This time I remembered to hold onto my keys. The driver didn’t actually take them to the right spot. Normally visitors don’t know if they are at the right section of the wall but the clue this time was that there was no cable car.

A long climb up.

They asked a passer-by to take their picture and you can see their enthusiasm waning in each shot.

1

2

Enough already.

And finally, I think that Caidy actually asked this guy for his picture, much to his delight.

That is some head of hair.

Next episode we finally head out of town to visit places I haven’t been before. Finally!