Days 10-11: Shanxi Province

There were no soft sleepers left to Datong, so we took the hard sleeper option which was not too damn shabby. The only real difference is that there is no air conditioning (crap if it's cold or really hot, but it was a mild night), no closeable door, and there are 6 berths to a comparment rather than 4. The top bunk was so not an option - I would have dislocated my other knee getting to it. But we had a bottom and middle berth and it was comfy, although the pillows were crap.

Datong is a miniature Beijing covered by a layer of coal dust. As a town, it's not particulary interesting, but it is the gateway to two amazing sights - the Cloud Ridge Caves (Yungang Shiku) and the Hanging Monastery (Xuankong Si).

Little Matt in Big China

Matt and I took a CITS tour to the caves and temple. OK. We sold out. It couldn't have worked out better. Our fellow tourists, 4 Belgians, an American and a Japanese, were great value. Our loyal CITS guide was a treasure trove of information (perhaps too much) with all kinds of snippets, for example, did you know that 1 gram of coal from Datong releases 8 kjs of energy, compared with other coal which only releases 4 kjs (not a physicist so figures may be crumbly)? No, we didn't either. Do you care? No, we didn't either.

But it was good to get an insider's take (albeit one with verbal diarrhea) on the Caves. The formation of them is quite mind-blowing. They date back to 460 AD, the architects first digging a hole from the top of the caves, which let in light and carving the sculptures from the top using ropes. I can't even imagine this feat today with all our technology, let alone 1500 years ago. Bugger me stunned.

Second stop was the Hanging Monastery. Same crazy-arsed feat, built around the same time as the caves - the builders used ropes from the top of the cliff, to carve out the foundations from the rock and build the temple from there. It looks precarious but it's solid. At least that's what we were told, although you do have the option of paying 1 yuan "insurance" when you go in. Hmmm.

It's safe! (maybe)

In one of the chambers was a big boddhavista with about 20 small bodhisattvas surrounding it, all of them with their heads missing. Apparently during the Cultural Revolution, the communists, in their frenzied attempt to purge non-Mao related religions from China, chopped all their heads off. They were too scared to take the head off the big buddha though. What that says about the perpetrators, doesn't need to be said here.

The terrain of northern China is like nothing I've ever seen before. It's basically desert (apparently the area used to be covered with forests but fires from all the wars, turned it into wasteland) broken up by deep canyons and villages of cave-dwellings.

Back in Datong around 6 p.m, Matt and I, not to put too fine a point on it, stank. Datong's main (read, only) industry is coal and as it's located next to the pass leading to Inner Mongolia, it's dry, dusty and sooty. Ergo, so were we. After a day of touring, we were desperate for a shower. Some of the guys from the tour, Ian, Maria and Sebastien were staying at a hostel near the station so we tried to convince the staff there to let us have a shower before we got on our sleeper train.

At first they were obliging. They said we could have a shower on the 4th floor. We went to the 4th floor. At the end of a long corridor were pink lights and a row of girls lined up along the wall. It looked, ahem, rather dodgy. A man came to greet us and said Matt could have a shower, but no women were allowed. Now, why don't you tell me what kind of shower Matt could have had?

We went back to the first floor, explained our dilemma and they said, "Yes. Man can have shower. Woman, no." Bloody Hell. Of course, we'd forgotten our manners and the universal palm-greaser, so we offered them money. 8 yuan for a shower. Please? No problem! was the response. You can have a shower on the 8th floor. But no women. Huh? We explained that I didn't care having a shower in the men's shower room. I was so frikkin' desperate I'd have had a shower in the street. OK. You can lock the door to the showers. No problem! Mission accomplished.

After our shower, we hung out in Ian, Mari and Sebastien's room. Sebastien went down for a "massage", and when he came back, had stories of having a reasonably crap massage, with the hard sell afterward. The lovely filly finished the massage, presented him with a porn mag and pointed to a body part not previously massaged. He demurred, saying, "No, that's not what I asked for."...

Kinki's Daily Dose... Mao

Mao for sale

How much can you criticise the Cult of Mao without being censored in China?

Matt asked who we thought was a reasonably enlightened Chinese person what she thought of Mao. She said, "Chinese people love Mao". She then went on to say that nobody is perfect, and he made some mistakes, like the Cultural Revolution.

I don't know about you, but I reckon a Revolution that directly or indirectly killed 30 million Chinese is a bit bloody more than simply a "mistake".

That's not to say everyone feels the same way. But after our visit to Mao's mausoleum and from the interactions we had with Chinese people (for example, one of the hawkers at Huanghua tried to sell us "Mao's Red Book", putting the book to her heart and looking toward Heaven. Enough said.) adoration of Mao, the "Saviour of China", seems to be the status quo. Blame for the Cultural Revolution was, of course, officially handballed to the Gang of Four after Mao's death, so he has managed to remain sanctified in the people's eyes.

Big Brother is alive and living in China. People hear what the government wants them to hear. Of course, that's true to some extent in most countries, but China has cut itself off from the rest of the world. You can't access any internet sites from China with a free domain, such as .blogspot, or .typepad, assumedly because it's too difficult to police what amounts to a massive source of free, potentially damaging (in China's eyes) information.

Kinki's China Tip for the Day

Even if you only take a few overnight trips, take a small towel (like the ones you get in an onsen). You can usually persuade cheaper hotels (that have a shared dorm section and therefore common showers) to give you a shower, but towels are not provided.

Cloud Ridge Caves Photo Gallery
Hanging Monastery Photo Gallery