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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