Holy coaly and 'big together' in Datong

Even if you missed my sophisticated puns in the title of the blog entry, that's no problem :-)... Who or what is Datong? Nowadays Datong is the coal pit of China with plenty of coal trucks, coal trains (no wonder that the last steam engine train of the world was produced here in 1988), coal-fired power plants and supposedly coal dust all over the town. We were lucky enough not to see the last one - maybe due to the weather. Datong used to be the capital of the Tuoba. What, you don't know the Tuoba yet? (here comes my history corner...) The Tuoba were a union of Turkish-speaking nomads who united Northern China around 386 AD, converted to buddhism and built some magnificent buddha grottoes (the so-called Yungang Caves) near Datong.

But the most spectacular sight in and around Datong which we visited was the Hanging Monastery (Xuankong Si). In the morning there were no big hords of tourists there and we could enjoy the monastery in sunshine. How could anybody build a monastery in such a place? And why? The 'how' seems to be a clever kind of architect, however given the fact that it was built approximately 1400 years ago, it still looks like a world wonder to me. Climbing up and down the staircases inside the building complex felt quite eerie and the holes in the stairs with 'excellent view down the rock' encouraged me to walk cautiously. And why did they built the monastery on the rock? There are many theories. For safety, some say, because of the floods of the once-upon-a-time river in the valley (others say) and again others claim it's for the holy atmosphere up there.

Second place of interest are of course the Yungang Caves. With much love for details and artistic value, one cave tells the story of one of the buddhas (Gautama) from his birth to his life in a palace. I especially liked the scene of him riding on an elephant. Doesn't sound to you like a very Chinese idea? Well, maybe it isn't because the styles used here mixed Indian, Persan, Chinese and Greek styles. You can imagine that many parts of the caves are heavily destroyed (thanks to the coal dust, vandals including the cultural revolution, unsuccessful early restoration attempts etc)...