Adventures in Shanxi province

I'm now back in Beijing after a quick four-day stint in the amazing mountaineous Shanxi province. I travelled with five fellow scientists/partners, and I think the best part of the trip was travelling in good company. The train journeys were relaxed and entertaining: we played games and had a good laugh. The sights we saw inspired interesting conversations. Travelling with other people gave me a lot more perspective.

After the conference I had two days of sightseeing in Beijing: the beautiful Summer Palace, the traquil Lama temple, the hustle and bustle of the streets, the tourist traps. On Sunday evening I met up with my travel buddies at the Beijing West train station, and we caught a sleeper train to Datong, the coal mining capital of China. The journey was six or seven hours, and I slept easily the most of it. We had hard sleeper beds, which were really confortable, and although they were open to the aisle, it felt safe as many people were around.

In Datong we ended up going to an organised tour of the Yungang Buddha grottoes and the Hanging Monastery. The grottoes were located near Datong, and contained huge awe-inspiring Buddha statues. The Hanging Monastery were two-hour drive away from Datong, and the area around was beautiful with mountains and rivers. The Hanging Monastery actually hangs, and it looks very tiny in comparison to the massive mountain that protects it from sun, wind and rain. Given that it has survived there already for 1400 years, we braved walking on the narrow passages. The European style health and safety pre-cautions were non-existent: the lack of high railings on the passages kept me glued to the wall. Not a good place for people like me who are scared of heights! Our travel guide Happy was worth her name, and after the two amazing sights, we were dropped off at a hotel in Hunyuan (near the Hanging Monastery) where she negotiated us drastically reduced room prices.

On Tuesday, we set off early to climb Mount Hengshan, one of the holy mountains of Taoism. The morning started off rainy, and we had our doubts about spending three hours on a rainy mountain. Luckily the rain ceased and we had the perfect misty weather for exploring the Taoist temples whilst the monks were burning incence and beating gongs. It was amazingly beautiful and out-of-this-world, probably the best thing I've seen in China this far. After the mountain we took a bus back to Datong (with loads of random Chinese snacks) and a sleeper train to Taiyuan, where it arrived at 11 pm. After five attempts, we found a hotel with free rooms, and we booked for two nights.

Wednesday morning was another relatively early morning, and the rock-hard mattresses in the hotel didn't help the matter. We took a minibus to Pingyao, and we were accompanied by the family of the driver. Amazingly enough, the six-year old could count in English, as well as ask how are you and list about half a dozen different fruit. It seems that China is valuing the language education at the moment! Pingyao was a very touristy walled city which had remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. A lot of Chinese cities used to have city walls, but in majority of the cases the cities have grown and the bricks from the walls have been used for other purposes. Pingyao however had the original walls, and the city inside had lots of preserved temples, banks, government offices, schools etc which made the whole city a massive museum. Lots of old courtyard houses were converted into guesthouses, and we had a delicious lunch in one of them. Also lots of touristy shopping was available, and we made some well-considered and well-bargained purchases. One of my travelling companions bought Chinese chess, Xianqi, and we found some friendly local men who were willing to teach him the rules and to have a couple of matches. When we caught a bus back to Taiyuan, we thought we had seen a whole day's worth of China, but on the walk back to the hotel we encountered a number of exciting things. There were a hundred or so people singing together in a circle in one of the street corners. There was a dance aerobic class going on in front of a building, and two of us (including me!) joined in for a couple of songs, trying really hard to learn the steps. There was amazing street food, noodles and kebabs, and a friendly Chinese man who taught us Chinese phrases. I learned to ask "how much" with the right tones, to say "I don't understand", and some other essential words.

Thusrday was our final day outside Beijing, and it was raining again. Or rather, it started raining half an hour after we had left the hotel without our rain gear. We went to the Twin Pagoda Towers, tallest in the world. I think my dad would've loved it, as you got to go inside and climb to the top for the best views in the city! After the pagoda towers we tried to go to the China Coal Museum, but we had to split up for taxis and the other driver didn't know where to go. So instead three of us ended up having tasty local lunch, with potentially the best mushroom-potato-pepper dish in the world. The bullet train journey back to Beijing went fast with games of Psychiatrist and Click-Click-Bang, and soon we were back at my hostel and in bed for another short night, as on Friday we went to hike the Great Wall. Did I mention that two of the people were training for a marathon? I didn't realise when we set off, but I might have been better off taking the cable car up, as the Wall itself had a lot of steep stairs... regardless of being out of breath most of the time, it was Great as the name implies! Also, we separated at the top, so I had an hour of very calm sitting and appreciating the view whilst others hiked to the non-tourist stretches. On the way down, all of us were exhausted and took a toboggan down! In the evening we had a dinner in true Beijing style: duck!

Now it's Saturday I think and I'm exhausted. Others have flights today to go back home, and I'm having a relaxed day to recover and plan the next ten days I've got left in China. Maybe a trip to Xian, maybe staying in Beijing,... time will tell!