Interesting things I've noticed in China

Hide and seek	Tree on a drip...	Vodka made of ginseng
funny crossing	One of the numerous sources of hot water available almost everywhere	Quite joyful...
Smile! I am taking a picture...	Father lives in the biggest cave, mother in the one with double arch, toilet is outside...	Another example of a tree with a dropper
Welcome!	A village where everyone is dyеing threads	An example how were made architectural decorations (papier maché)
I would like Pentium 18, please )	Religious symbol	peephole...
CocaCola?

73. Datong, China, 2011

In Datong we stayed in a kind of super-hotel near the train station. The room had a mixture of smells of train wagons, toilets and cigarets. Everything needed fresh paint. The room was on the 7th floor, no elevator. No water neither. Well, at least we could sleep.)

Upon arrival to Datong we have decided to exchange our tickets to Xi'an (the city we planned to go next). In Beijing we managed to buy tickets only in the sitting wagons, as all sleeping ones were sold out. And all this for 16 hour ride at night! Though in Datong, on the contrary, there were still some tickets available. As we understood later 70% of tickets are sold at the departure point and 30% are available for purchase in other cities. Strange system, and it is hard to plan a trip.

At the train station it was easy to distinguish european tourists - all two persons were a head higher than the rest of the crowd. These were two polish guys. One visited another who was working in China as a teacher of English in a kindergarden and was travelling during his vacations. They told us that when they arrived they tried to find a hostel, the address of which they have found in the internet. On its place they have found 5-star hotel so they went on searching for their plan B about 5 blocks further. When they passed two blocks they were surprised seeing several demolished buildings. Two blocks further they found themselves in the middle of ruins! As if the city was bombarded! (As we found out later the whole city was "renovating"!) Finally they have found some place 12$ a room, no shower, communal toilet.

Thus chattering we have entered into a restaurant. Well, it is hard to call THAT a restaurant. Some sort of room about 70 square feet in a one-story private house. On a dirty concrete floor a dog chased a cat among scarce clients' feet. The food was good and well cocked though to be sure we had to sterilize ourselves with a bit of local home-made ginseng alcohol.

While we were eating one of the guys went to a shop across the street to ask for a few carton boxes. By the way the shop was of the same type as our "restaurant" – a room in a private house full of products flooding to the street. We were surprised and inquired why they needed those boxes. And the answer was more surprising. Our polish tourist were leaving that night by train and they had standing (!!!) tickets. We laughed a lot though we shouldn't have as for our next part of the trip, from Xi'an to Shanghai, we had only two choices: by train, standing, or by airplane. By train as always 18 hour night ride. Guess what we have chosen?))

Visually, seen for the first time, Datong doesn't seem to have 1.5 million inhabitants! A typical image was ruins on one side and a wide 4-lane boulevard just nearby with a 6-way traffic on it. Downtown was very nice, new, entirely renovated but at the same time it managed to preserve some ancient architectural charm. It was fun to visit but for a foreigner it was linguistically harder here than in the capital. More we forgot "inglish" the better was comprehension. While walking around we wandered to a hutong (slums). We were observed by locals with the same undisguised interest as we were observing them. There were groups of people here and there on streets sitting, chatting, watching their kids playing or playing themselves cards, domino, some sort of tokens with hieroglyphs on them on a wooden board, or more active games like badminton or feet birdie badminton. While we were passing by all they looking at us, smiling and saying the same: hello, hello, hello…

Trains in China resemble sovietic ones though wagons have 3 superposed suspended beds. Rails are often made of concrete. There are numerous salesmen selling books and a lot of food stuff and everything is calm and organized without screaming and bazar. From the train Datong seemed a mixture of ruins and construction sites. Quite impressive! I didn't noticed any cemetery outside the city though on some private terrains there were some things resembling graves. Vast corn fields were stretching out till horizon. I didn't notice a lot of domestic animals: four cows here or a horse, some goats there. It is possible that livestock farming is more developed south.

As always welcome to my new photo gallery at:
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Public "health"

All this could seem rather bizarre but it didn't spoil our positive impression of China. In some European cities, for instance, one can find dog poop more often. Beijing and Shanghai are appear clean. Quite often on streets there could be seen a banch of cleaners (or vélo-cleaners) equipped only with brooms, wearing long uniforms even in the summer heat.

Souvenir shop toilet	无评论	A bit too chic for garbage collectors
Decanting...	Before entering the toilet pleas check: gas mask, security belt...	Why use 5 hieroglyphs for such a basic thing?
	Taken directly from the road	A star had fallen
	Irrigating greens

72. The Yungang Grottoes; The Hanging Monastery, Datong, China, 2011

There are some interesting things to see not far from Datong in China: Yungang Grottoes, Hanging Monastery and the biggest in world wooden pagoda (which we didn't managed to visit).

The grottoes are united into a whole complex. There are 252 caves in total, all of different size and had-carved primarily with statues of Buddha totalling to about 51 thousand! The complex takes part of UNESCO world heritage list. The site is quite impressive! And I have really tried to take on photo as much as possible. )

The biggest statue is 17 meters high and smallest ones are not higher than 2 centimetres. I was charmed by masters who "extracted" such magnificence from the rock. Some details, which have survived till nowadays, let us imagine the richness of the decoration in the past. The interior of the grottoes was brightly decorated, walls were covered with a mixture of clay and straw and painted thus converting cave walls into colourful murals. Some details were covered with gold. Sculptures often had sapphire eyes. Presently there is not much left and only holes scattered around mark places were decoration pieces were attached. The exterior of the biggest caves were covered by wooden structures of pagoda-type, from the 3rd floor of which one could look directly into the eyes of Buddha. Fantastic!

I have found such description of Buddha's appearance:
- Fingers and toes were very long and were connected by webs thus resembling duck webbed feet.
- Buddha's hands were beautiful and long till his knees.
- Buddha had a long and beautiful tongue with which he could reach his ears and hair. It was color red.
- Buddha had 40 teeth.
- He had deep blue sapphires-like eyes.
- Buddha's eyelashes were straight and thin like ones of a "thirsty cow".

In this description nothing was mentioned about his long ears reaching his shoulders which we saw on each statue. All this looks like Cernobyl people in a few generations!


The way to the hanging monastery became an adventure. It was kind of easy to get to it. At the departure bus station in Datong I was comparing hieroglyphs on buses with ones I have transcribed painstakingly on a piece of paper from internet. It was useless to ask as the solemn answer to any question was a joyful "yes!". Well anyway, after about an hour of rather extreme driving (the driver preferred passing on a two-lane road even cutting opposite traffic) we and some chinese were dropped off on an intersection in a some inhabited place, were "asked" to wait and left. In 10 minutes of nervous expectation a bunch of taxis come and took us directly to the monastery with no problems and no additional charge. There the same drivers started to ask us if we were ready to leave. As we preferred to visit the monastery first, later the taxi prices were exorbitant. After several minutes of hard bargaining we were finally delivered to a nearby village's bus station. The station was a big clean building and even with signs in chinese it was easy to find a ticket booth. Thus I approached it, handed a big banknote (thinking of highest price possible), showed two fingers, meaning that there were two of us, and declared happily: Datong! The madam made round eyes, shrugged her shoulders and said something very long and for sure very interesting in chinese from which I got that she didn't understood what I wanted. Thus I have started to analyze all elements of our conversation: it should have been easy to recall Mao's face on the banknote and for sure understood that two fingers meant two people. Oh yes! I should have badly pronounced the name of the city of our destination. Ok, in chinese there are 4 tonalities for each vowel thus I started to distort the name of the poor city: Dotoo-o-ng, Daaa-a-tong, Dtaang… Suddenly her face cleared and she happily announced: "Oh! DA-tong!". As if near this bus station there were 40 localities with a similar name. Well, ok. I believe she got were we are aiming to and I have started again to ask for the ticket.

Suddenly the madam made a helpless gesture and miauled with a pity. "Mew what?!! - said I. After a second mew our conversation blocked. Her gesture should meant that something was absent, but what? No more tickets? No more busses? The city seized to exist? After about 15 minutes of puzzled waiting near the ticket booth we have finally received our tickets and in about an hour left. Probably she didn't want to sell tickets as there were not enough passengers. But the bus left full. Well the mystery remained unsolved.

This unique monastery was built about 1500 years ago. It is attached to almost vertical cliff in a narrow canyon. Presently the canyon is blocked by an impressive dam. The monastery itself is a rather original construction - several buildings supported by wooden poles a leg thick, clogged with tourists (sometimes rather big-bottomed, which frightened considering apparent fragility of the structure). But nevertheless I have survived and thus can present a  photo gallery.

Welcome to my new photo gallery on China
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Animals in China

A little gallery on animals in China.

In Beijing dogs are rarely seen on streets. The first impression is that almost as all the dogs has been eaten. Though in the modern Shanghai they are everywhere. I think it depends on the quality of life.