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
http://www.artiomkusci.com/foto/galleries/072/?en#1
www.artiomkusci.com
