The familiar and the friendly
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2007
1
5
20
Trip End
Dec 15, 2007
Datong,
China
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
traveling alone has a certain leanness to it that i quite enjoy...it provides a sense of mobility and flexibility that i've never quite found anywhere else. but it can get lonely. so it was with great happiness that i found myself with three companions in beijing for a few days. we had all heard good things about this massive art and gallery space on converted industrial grounds in the north-east of the city called factory 798. when it took us an hour and a half to figure out the proper buses to take and where to find them once we knew i discovered that being lost with friends is definitely superior to being lost alone. from what i'd read about factory 798 i'd assumed that it was just that, a factory. the picture in my beijing city guide seemed to be of a massive converted structure...and i'd assumed that it was all in one building. it actually takes up about five city blocks (small blocks for beijing, admittedly) and has a seemingly endless array of galleries, shops, cafes, and restaurants...all scattered throughout an old industrial compound. a few of the buildings even seemed to still be operational, steam belching from stacks and hot water dripping from pipes running in every direction. i'm very prone to gallery/museum burnout...i can only contemplate art for so long before i stop being able to process it. but for some reason i found myself remaining interested for longer than i usually do. maybe it was the setting or maybe the up and coming artists in china resonate with me...but i was very impressed with much of what i saw. factory 798 seems to be a bit of an oasis for the beijing art crowd...there are things going on in there that would be impossible anywhere else, ideas being expressed that would be censored in other arenas. there was graffiti everywhere (there is none...absolutely zero...in the parts of beijing i've seen) and even 'free tibet' t-shirts for sale. there were american art dealers wandering around taking notes for potential purchases...it all felt like some sort of chinese bohemia. i had read that factory 798 has become so successful that the artistic community is becoming worried that the chinese government is going to stop ignoring it. i even heard that the government likes the way the space was converted...but might prefer condos instead of art. there are varying opinions is to whether the olympics will save the space...or just delay the inevitable.
after leaving factory 798 we all went to a vegetarian restaurant that phil had discovered with the help of happy cow (a website dealing in vegetarian restaurants around the world)...as it turns out, all four of us are vegetarians. the place is run by buddhists and the food is great. not quite chu chai great (my favourite veggie restaurant...thai and in montreal) but close. we had smoked fish cutlets, sweet and sour chicken with pineapple and peppers, chicken in a basil and chili broth, peking duck...but the best dish was a cold, thinly sliced beef with chili. we probably overdid it on the protein...but it was hard to resist. the menu was insanely long, and accompanied by a photo album of all the dishes! we also had tea of a sort that i've never had...and it was wonderful...osmanthus with smoked plums and brown sugar. it tasted sort of like hot ribena, but way better. osmanthus is some sort of flower that i'd not heard of before. it was easily the best meal i've had so far in china and it was wonderful to share it with friends. afterwords we all walked down to the donghuamen night market and shared a couple skewers of candied strawberries while we walked past the stalls where every creature on earth was being grilled up...highlights including scorpions, sea horses, snakes, grubs, centipedes, various organs of unknown origin, and starfish. it was a great day, and even though we've all gone our separate ways (phil back to england, me to datong, maggie and evan still in beijing...although we're hoping to meet up again in chengdu in a couple of weeks) i'll carry it with me.
and now i'm in datong, about 200 km west of beijing in the hills of northern shanxi province. i thought that beijing's air was pretty bad...datong's is putrid. that 70% of all the coal in china is mined here might have something to do with it. but i didn't really come for the city itself, i came for the things located nearby...namely the hanging temple and yungang caves. but first the train ride. up to this point i had only ridden in sleeper trains, but the train i took to datong had only hard seats. i was a bit worried when i went to purchase the ticket because this week is a national holiday and everyone travels around to be with family or take in some sights. i was told that there were tickets left on the train that i wanted but no seats...i had a 'standing ticket'. i was happy to have a ticket at all, so i tried not to think about it too much. the next day when i went to board the train there was a scrum outside of every entrance i could see. i eventually made my way inside the car i had been assigned to be confronted with more people than i've ever seen jammed into a train car (or any other form of transport for that matter). all seats were taken and the entire aisle was full...both ends stuffed as well...the conductor had to move people around just to shut the train door. i was stuck up against the edge of a wall with nowhere to put my bag. beside me a young man stood tucked away in the low sink meant to catch water from the tap (there's a hot water dispenser in every car on trains in china). across from me another man was crunched against a wall, his face pointed at a thermometer hanging there. with nothing else to do, he began blowing on it trying to get the red to rise. i tried to make myself comfortable and settled in for what was supposed to be about a five hour train ride. i was the only westerner in my car, and the only one that i'd seen anywhere near the train at all. the conductor had greeted me in english with a 'hello' when he'd passed. about half an hour into the trip he came back and started talking to three teenaged boys who were sitting on a row of three seats near to me. at the end of their conversation the boys bunched together making space on the end of the row...the conductor motioned for me to sit down. i protested, not wanting to be treated in such a way when so many other people had to stand. but he, the boys, and other people nearby refused to let me do anything other than sit down. i was grateful and accepted the hospitality. i realized afterward that i had protested in exactly the right way...in china offers of any kind should always be politely refused once or twice before eventually accepting. there was only one stop between beijing and datong...and it felt like the whole train was emptying. when the deluge finally stopped i looked up...and the train was still full...but 'full' the way a train might be full in canada. i was stunned at just how many people had been on board.
today i went to the hanging temple and the yungang caves, both buddhist related sites, both dating back 1500 years. i had been planning on skipping the hanging temple as it was more difficult to get to...but as i was coming out of my hotel i was mistaken for part of a tour group that was leaving the hotel lobby going to both the temple and the caves. once the tour operator realized i wasn't part of the group he started pitching the tour to me...the price seemed reasonable (and lunch was included) so i joined in. the hanging temple is a temple complex built precariously on the side of a cliff face 50m off the ground. apparently it used to be 100m up but 1500 years of deposits by the river below added 50m of ground. the temple was stunning to see at first, being held up by stilts...but the impact was somewhat lessened by the sheer number of people waiting in line to go and walk through it. the national holiday also means that tourist sights are jammed full all week. the yungang caves are in a sandstone ridge where caves, carvings, and statues were carved out of the rock. many of the caves are breathtaking and the buddhas majestic (one as high as 17m and many others close to that). the carvings were done by a group of nomads from the mongolia region who settled in shanxi and founded a buddhist empire in the fifth century. the caves are in better shape than some similar sights, having survived archaeological looting and the cultural revolution fairly intact.
i have managed to lose all the pictures that i'd taken up until my return to beijing...i corrupted my memory card with too much quick and dirty plugging and unplugging in the sketchy windows machines in china trying to upload images to this site. so i'm going to be more careful from now on. i thought that i might wait until i get home to add pictures to the travelogue...but i realized that i can have my memory backed up on cd in a lot of internet cafes...and so with a backup in hand i can return to trying to get my pictures online. so hopefully it won't be too long before i add some new pictures. i found myself less upset by losing the photos than i thought i might be. i guess when i thought about it i realized how little i look at my pictures from india in the scheme of things and how obsessing over pictures means taking focus away from the actual experiences themselves...photos only ever being poor, static shadows of events that are best kept alive in my own organic memory anyhow.
