Shanxi is a Northern province of China where we spent a week between
Beijing and Xi'an. It's quite mountainous, bur the flatter bits are
heavily farmed. We saw mountains of corn cobs around the place, for
example, as they've just been harvested. Unfortunately, it doesn't
seem to get much rain (we have benefited from blue skies much of the
time) and many of the river beds are dusty and dry, although this may
be partly due to overuse. It also provides 1/3 of China's coal, and
our first destination, Datong, smelt so much of it that it took
Adrienne back to her childhood when she lived in a house heated by a
coal fire.
We didn't visit Datong for the city itself, although it has some
interesting remnants of its past as a capital city, but to visit two
sights nearby. The first is the hanging monastery, which clings
precariously to an overhanging cliff face, with the ground 50m below
(it used to be 100m, but silt deposits from the river below has raised
the ground level over the years). It was built after a great flood in
order that people could pray for better fortune in the future, hence
the reason it was built so far off the ground - just in case the
floods did come back. It was constructed by workers lowering
themselves down on ropes from the top of the cliff. The overhang and
its north-facing position has protected it from the sun and the rain
for hundreds of years,. It seems to be more a tourist attraction than
a working monastery these days- the monks having "left" during the
cultural revolution.
The other site was the Cloud Ridge caves. Here in the 5th century, an
emperor who had conducted a bloody purge of Buddhists repented and
ordered a large Buddhist statue to be built. First a cave was dug out
and then the carving done in the cave, to protect the statue form the
elements. His descendants added more, until there were more than 20
caves, moistly with large seated Buddhas (the largest nearly 20m tall)
and other carvings and paintings around the walls and ceiling of each
cave. The caves and carvings were dug from the top down so that the
sculptors could see what they were doing - in one cave they made
Buddha's torso too long, and had to dig down a couple of metres below
ground level to fit his legs in!
We moved on to Wutai Shan, one of China's many holy mountain areas,
with about 20 Buddhist temples dotted around the valley -and some up
the mountains. We were taken aback by the weather - it snowed as we
arrived! We had to lean our packs against the door o our room to block
the draught at night. We enjoyed more the temples with fewer other
tourists as they were more atmospheric - it wasn't that hard to dodge
the Chinese tour groups, to be honest. However, by the end we were a
little bit templed out, even though each one had its own style.
Finally, we visited the walled town of Pingyao. A bit like Suzdal in
Russia, it was an important city for many years and then became a bit
of a backwater which spared it a lot of modern deb\velpomnet and makes
it a pleasant place to visit. It's admittedly very touristy, with the
main streets entirely composed of guesthouses, restaurants, massage
parlours (real ones!), museums and shops selling handicrafts, local
food specialities, such as corned beef and big jars of vinegar, and
general touristy tat. However, it's easy to get off the beaten track
and walk down local side streets, often largely car-free for a bit of
peace. Or walk the walls as we did and get a bird's eye view of the
old town. The many museums are all based around a traditional
courtyard style layout, each specialising in a different topic, from
furniture to newspapers, to banking (the first modern Chinese bank was
started here), armed escorts (to move the bankers' money around, I
assume...) and even a museum of Chambers of commerce - surprisingly
more interesting than it sounds! Based around a single house with
maybe two or three courtyards, they were all bite-sized, so not too
heavy going to visit a few in a day. Anyway, a nice place to while
away a few days. It was here that we first met up with an ex-Ofgem
colleague, Angela and her friend Nicola, who finally caught us up
after leaving London 2 weeks after us.
From Pingyao, it was another sleeper train to Xi'an in the completely
different province of Shaanxi and home to the terracotta warriors.
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