Over a month ago I said the next post would be ‘following soon’.  Apparently I operate on a flexible idea of soon…

Nevertheless it is far past time to wrap up the summer activities.  So with my sisters along for the ride, we made it from Harbin back to Beijing for a day, as I had to go to the visa office and do the passport shuffle that allows me to stay here and live in the PRC.  That night we left again to Datong, a large-ish city in the north of Shanxi Province.  On paper it is nothing special, and the first inspection fit this, just another Chinese city amongst many.

The highlights here though were farther afield, day trips with taxi drivers, such as the tallest wooden pagoda in China, where we shared a lovely back and forth with our driver before he caved into the originally agreed upon price.  Tori and I have grown cold-blooded at haggling whilst here.  Not sure if that’s good or bad.  The pagoda itself was alright, and the ice cream being sold nearby by vendors was far more than alright, indeed the summers in these dusty, hot places make ice cream such a wonderful luxury to have.

Nearby as well were the Hanging Monastery, a Buddhist enclave carved into the face of a cliff and sporting well-worn wooden planks that have thankfully been replaced as need be over the past 1500 years, and the Yungang Grottoes.  The monastery was swamped with tourists, though we are part of that phenomenon so hard to complain.  It really was impressive to see and a little patience while tour groups swept past left us a few contemplative moments to enjoy the more serene aspects of it.

The Yungang Grottoes are similarly old.  Having been to Buddhist grottoes last year in Sichuan, I wasn’t sure if these would seem interesting or not.  Suffice it to say they were spectacular and I think it’s not overstatement to say that all four of us really thought that these were quite cool to see.  I’ve also learned that I like grottoes.  So file that away.

Datong itself was a charming city, full of traditional, low-key Chinese character that the larger tourist centers lack and I rather enjoyed it.  If they had decent paying English jobs, I could see myself there.  Tori parted from us in Datong, headed south to fly out to America.  After that, it was me , Lex, and Win, and we took a train out south to Pingyao, a touristed but beautiful city preserved well since the 1400s by the caprice of history.

Activities mostly consisted of exploring the city’s various sites and taking in the quiet, old atmosphere.  Particularly at odd hours and on the side streets, the palpable history seeped out from heavy wooden gates and in the cracks of the stone walls.  The people here were quite nice and I was happy to pass the time there before moving on to Xi’an.

I won’t expend much time or energy describing Xi’an.  I’ve spent time here before and the majority of my efforts were focused around scrambling for tickets back to Beijing so we could all make our flights home.  It led to bullet trains to Zhengzhou, where we passed a night eating late and playing cards whilst sitting on newspapers in the train station – this is a wonderfully typically Chinese experience!.  In a sick way, I enjoy that stuff most of all.