Heading for Beijing today

We have been to Pingyao and now Datong since the last post. In Pingyao we stayed in the guest house with the nicest hosts you could imagine. They kept giving stuff to the kids like drinks and peanuts. There was only one internet connection for the whole guesthouse so we couldn't really stay on for very long because someone else was always waiting. We are in one of the HUGE internet cafes you find in China. Actually this one only has about 50 computers (the other 46 people are smoking). We have been in internet cafes with up to about 200 computers.

Pingyao is a beautiful little city. They have an almost intact city wall that is about 6km (don't believe the link it says 64 km) in total. You can climb up and walk but not all the way round as a couple of places have caved in. They seem to be in the process of rebuilding it. It has a much more authentic look than the one in Xi'an. The guidebook had said that large parts were missing in Xi'an(3 yrars ago) and it is intact now. It is quite obvious that it is new construction in a lot of places. The one in Pingyao had bricks falling out of the facade all over so it looked old. Apparently Pingyao was quite poor so it didn't get torn down and rebuilt like so many other places. It has a lot of old buildings and has been designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO. It was well worth going to. We were there for two days and rented bicycles each day to cycle round the town. It is what you think of when you think of China. It is the only place we have been to that had old architechture over most of the old town. We took a side trip to the Wang family courtyard which was a walled enclosure for about 250 members of the extended Wang family built in the 1700's. The kids got tired after two hours but it would take 3 or 4 hours to see everything. We had the option of going to the Qiao family courtyard where they filmed Raise the Red Lantern but the guy at the guesthouse said the Wang courtyard was 5 times bigger and better. I think the kids would have been fine at the small one.

The night before last we took the night train between Pingyao and Datong. We arrived at 5.15 in the morning. The kids were still tired so we found a hotel and let them crash. The first hotel we went to had indescribably bad toilets. We would have had to share and I couldn't even look let alone think of using them. We went to another hotel across the square and it seemed great in comparison. It is still dirty (I will do another post on the pollution soon) and the plaster is falling off the walls, but what the heck, I don't feel like being ill when I use the bathroom. Actually, I am sure it was once a luxury hotel. It has really nice architecture with a grand staircase from the lobby to the second floor. It is just that it was probably a luxury hotel in the 50's.

Datong is really a nasty place with two fabulous attractions. Yesterday we went on a bus tour to both. They are the Yungang Grottoes and the Hanging Monastery. The tour was good but the two venues are in opposite directions from town so you are on the bus for a total of 4 out of 8 hours to see the sights. The grottoes were very impressive. They cover about a kilometer of cliff face but half of them are "under renovation". A lot of chinese sites are being fixed up for the olympics next year. I think that is why they fixed the walls in Xi'an. We were talking to a guy that had been to the terra cotta warriors in 2003 and he said they were surrounded by huts. They now have huge new buildings around all the dig sites. The half we saw were impressive enough to make the trip to Datong worthwhile. There were 20 caves open and about 7 of them had huge Buddhas or Boddhisatvas several meters high carved out of the rock. Some of the caves had elaborate carvings all round and a couple of them were painted as well as carved.

The Hanging Monastery was built by monks 1400 years ago by lowering themselves down the cliff on ropes. It was certainly a labour of devotion. When you are in it, you just hope it lasts 1400 and one years. It is obviously very old wood. Some of the passages are outside with just knee high rails and a drop of 20 meters off the other side. They have set out a route so you cover the whole thing but everyone travels in one direction. I am sure that in high season, you would have no choice of the pace you travelled in. There is probably just a slow shuffle all round.

We are catching the train to Beijing at noon today.