Da Tong Jinye Hotel Datong

... was the bed above mine on the hard sleeper train. With her somewhat English and my ****** Chinese I found out that she was a dance and song teacher in Shanghai and that she was coming to Datong to visit a mountain with her 2 friends (pengyou) that lived in Datong. We managed to hold a good 1 hour conversation with 2 people sitting opposite and a lady above on the ...

... with a German couple (Sebastian and Jasmine) and we all loaded into a minivan and headed off. Our first stop was the Hanging Monastery built during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534). The monastery is built on the side of a cliff and was constructed from the top by workers who climbed from the other side and dropped down the face of the cliff from ropes. Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism are all represented in the monastery. It was a bit scary as the walkways ...

... full of sight-seeing. We got up early for a quick jog through a park where retired couples were dancing to classical music and grandparents were strolling along the paths, pretending to chase after their precocious grandchildren. Lu Wei's father then took us to the Yungang; a beautiful site of Buddhist carvings and statues of all sizes. Yungang was quite similar to the Longmen Grottoes, only it commissioned to be built by the Northern Wei Dynasty, 500 years before Longmen. I truly ...

... povedly, misto je to nadherne. Zbytek dne jsme stravili obchazenim vsech pamatek v centru, couranim po hutongua a vubec :) Na konec prvniho dne jsme vyrazili jeste na pagodu na okraji mesta. Pagoda byla vysoko, vedly k ni schody, umistene strategicky za zamcenou branou. Cestou k ni jsme sice videli tri babky, jak si upravuji odev, ale nejak jsme tomu nevenovali pozornost. Az do okamziku, kdy jsme zjistili, ze je ta branka zavrena. Jedna z nich nam rekla neco, cemuz jsme chvili ...

... s office cover-ups and scrub nurse hats ( like the ones that my grandma used to use when mowing the grass!!!~ family joke).  We really don't even know how to work the clothes or which way they go so we have to ask.  We were lucky because we got two workers who were young and who knew a tiny bit of English.  It was a fun combination... our groggy Chinese and their basic English.  I finally realized how I sound when I ask people really basic and dumb questions in Chinese becasue the girl ...

... I was glad to trek with some buddies along with hundreds of people on the trail. The trek was MUCH harder then I anticipated, kinda like the 2nd day of the Inca Trail with more oxygen, ie. 5-6 hours of nonstop steep steps. Hua Shan is known as the treacherous mountain where some portions require cables. I arrived at East Peak around 4:30 and promptly laid claim to the BEST spot for photographing the sunrise, which occurred behind clouds an hour later. = My legs got ...

... were spread out all over the park. If you really do want to visit' visit Ertong Park as it has an old war plane you can play on and you can then watch people swim in the horridly dirty lake and like me wonder if they actually know or have been taught about the effects of horridly dirty lakes on their health. After the city's two parks I headed to Red Flag Square to DICO's for a ...

... I guess I will fill in the blanks as I go. I got a call from Lou Wei today and we will finally meet up again in several days. She will begin her journey north from Kaifeng City tomorrow night and we will see each other again the night after. What a beautiful thought! Beers N Noodles toya.....shane _______________________________________ __________________ ...

... Heritage Site The Yungang Grottoes is considered by UNESCO a "masterpiece of early Chinese Buddhist cave art... [and] ...represent the successful fusion of Buddhist religious symbolic art from south and central Asia with Chinese cultural traditions, starting in the 5th century CE under Imperial auspices." Yungang Grottoes, one of the three ...

... still intact on the sculptures and they are resplendent. It is an awe-inspiring sight. In Datong we also visited a famous nine-dragon screen, a very large wall with glazed bricks sculpted into nine dragons with different colors. It was ...