Golden Week in Datong

Dave’s mom came to visit us during Golden Week, a week of vacation (although despite the great crowds everywhere we went, it seemed like all the shopkeepers, peddlers, transportation workers, and all other service workers, didn’t have the week off—who exactly does get vacation?) established to encourage domestic tourism. There is more than one Golden Week during the year: this one was dedicated to celebrating National Day, October 1^st. Anyway, because lots of people do travel and visit national tourist sights during Golden Week, the Chinese infrastructure is severely taxed, making something as simple as purchasing train tickets or using a public bathroom an adventure in itself. We had already heard about the various problems associated with Golden Week while we were in the States, so we were hesitant to do much travel during Pat’s visit. Of course, this put us in a bit of a predicament, since she was only going to be in China for two weeks and naturally we wanted her to be able to see more than Hohhot. After a lot of research, standing in line at the train station, and negotiations with different “helpers” (Dave will undoubtedly go into detail about this, so I won’t), Dave finally managed to arrange soft sleeper tickets on a train to Datong—a four hour train ride southeast of Hohhot—three nights stay at a four-star Chinese hotel, and once in Datong, a one-day CITS tour of the Caves of Yungang and the Hanging Temple. I have wanted to see both since leafing through our Lonely Planet last winter but didn’t know if we would ever make it there, so this was a great way to combine some sightseeing for Pat and those long-ago daydreams.

First, two things about setting off on the trip: with the help of our friend Emi, Dave was able to get tickets to Datong, but wasn’t able to get return tickets (we were assured that we could do it from Datong, and Mr. Wong put us in touch with his travel agent friend in Datong, who ended up helping us); and we never could figure out how to pronounce Datong, which made for some funny moments, as we would tell Chinese friends where we were going and we’d get a blank look. After a number of attempts at tones and variations on vowels, a light bulb would finally go on and our friends would say the name, to all intents and purposes exactly as we thought we had said it. Oh well. This inability to pronounce the name, and the lack of return tickets, didn’t dampen our excitement.

Travel to Datong was uneventful and a nice opportunity to see the countryside since the last time we had traveled that route—which is the same that leads to Beijing—it was dark and we were sleeping. I won’t say much about the hotel. Four-star Chinese seems to be different than four-star European (at least in our pitifully small experience—we have Novotel only to compare to the Datong Hotel) but we were nonetheless comfortably situated and the first day in Datong we wandered around a touristy part of Datong.

I think we are spoiled by Hohhot, the provincial capital of Inner Mongolia. Hohhot is remarkably clean, filled with tree-lined orderly boulevards (I never thought I would say that but it is true), and the air is not too bad. Datong, on the other hand, which is a coal-mining town, didn’t smell too good when we were there, was dirty, horribly crowded—probably because of Golden Week—and had very few trees. Naturally we didn’t see all of Datong, so I don’t pretend to speak for all of it and I am sure that many people really enjoy it. How’s that for being diplomatic?

Eating was eventful, to say the least. We are so used to having our places to eat right around our apartment that we don’t even think anymore about the great difficulties we had in the beginning, trying to order, trying to find plain old Chinese food (remember the beef gyoza and Dave’s bull horns?). Naturally we confronted the same problem in Datong. We had had such luck in Beijing using the Lonely Planet suggestions for restaurants, we again relied on it in Datong. Not such a good idea this time, it turned out. Unfortunately, 2 out of the 3 restaurants it lists are in four star locations and after the first one we tried (which had unspeakably strange dishes to our Western palates, and was quite expensive to boot) we shied away from the other choices. Just to hop ahead a bit, I will say that the next two nights we ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, being too tired and disoriented to brave finding a hole-in-the-wall restaurant of the sort we enjoy in Hohhot. We managed to find some things to eat. Among the dishes we didn’t sample (I kid you not): “F**k to Fry the Cow River,” “The Hot Monosodium Glutamate Vegetables Fries the Idea Powder,” “F**k Flavor Smoke Bamboo Shoot,” “The New Year Pudding Burns the Hair,” “Stab the Body Platter,” and “Bittern Bean Fetid Smell.” Yes, I do hear you all protesting that we just aren’t adventurous enough, but somehow something was lost in the translation and we didn’t feel up to it. We did have a great laugh in the restaurant however, with tears streaming down our faces, and then we ate our strange pizza and steamed rice.

Mr. Wong’s friend Mr. An and his interpreter William (a kindly man who works in the CITS—China International Travel Service—office in the Datong train station) arranged for us to take a CITS tour the second day of our stay to visit both the Caves of Yungang and the Hanging Temple. This was very kind of him and we were grateful, although he then dropped the bomb that we should just go to the train station on our last day and buy bus tickets back home. We had originally has the impression that he had already found us train tickets. Again, something was undoubtedly lost in translation. A little down hearted about this last turn of events, we nevertheless happily set off the next day in the little CITS bus, accompanied by two Chinese couples, three French girls (20-somethings, 2 of whom live and work in China), and two American guys (also mid-20s) who live and work in China, the driver of the bus and the tour guide, a nice young woman. I will not narrate the whole day because this is long enough as it is, and the pictures surely will speak better for the sights.

A huge buddha inside one of the caves--note the carvings all the way up the wall and on the ceiling.

There is still paint on many of the carvings on the walls and ceilings--some caves are so decorated with intricate designs that they feel like the inside of a cathedral in their scope and detail.


Samuel with the most famous of the over 50,000 buddhas carved into the Yungang Caves.

The Hanging Temple

The kids goofing with Jeremy, one of the Americans, at a traffic jam on the way back to Datong.

We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, even though it lasted until late dinner time, and the kids held up remarkably well. The drive was punctuated by phone calls from William (the tour guide and bus driver’s boss) to the tour guide and unfolded in the following way: first William said he found soft sleeper seats for 6 a.m. Thursday morning (we were supposed to leave Friday, and were booked through then at the hotel). So the tour guide kindly called the hotel for us, cancelled our third night and arranged for a 4:30 wake-up call. A couple hours later, William called back and said that he was mistaken, the tickets were for Friday morning at 6 a.m. The tour guide called the hotel back for us, re-instated our third night, cancelled the Thursday morning wake-up and scheduled a Friday morning wake-up call. Sheesh. We went from being disappointed that we had to leave a day early, to being glad for the early departure, since there wasn’t anything else we wanted to do, to being disappointed once again, as we now had to stay an extra day as originally planned. The coup de grace, though, was when we met William that night to pay for our train tickets. Oh my, says William, these are actually hard sleeper tickets and you are all separated.

We made it through the last day, Thursday, as best we could. It rained cats and dogs the whole day, so I stayed cozy in the hotel room and the kids ran around a bit with Grandma, napped, read, who knows what. We ate another thrilling meal in the hotel restaurant, packed, and were out the door really early Friday morning. I think I already mentioned in an earlier post the excitement with Grandma’s food poisoning on the trip back, so I won’t go into that here. All in all, did we enjoy our trip? Hmm… Since coming home from Datong we have had a very sick Grandma and then a very sick Grace. Datong seems miles away but what sticks with us is the wonder of the two sights and our general dislike of the city. Sorry to say, but I’m afraid it’s true. We arrived back in Hohhot Friday morning to a crystal blue sky and a sharp autumn crispness in the air—it felt like really coming home.