A Glimpse of Soul in Ancient Footsteps

On the train from Beijing to Datong, I began to wonder if the capital’s metropolis stretched the entire 175 miles between the two cities. I’d bought a “hard seat,” the equivalent of a coach ticket, to watch the countryside unfold outside the window for the 61/2-hour ride. At first the route looked like any other out of a capital city, an undistinguished corridor of housing and small enterprises, but here the suburban sprawl went on and on. Then we were climbing and roaring through a succession of mountain tunnels. We emerged into a barren early spring landscape of empty farm tracts and leafless trees, all in shades of brown. We were on the outskirts of Datong, a major industrial and coal-producing center on a high, arid plain in Shanxi province, with 2 1/2 million inhabitants.

As you would expect in a centuries-old city, Datong has a couple of minor historic treasures, but its main attraction is 10 miles west: Yungang, a cluster of Buddhist grottoes filled with 1,500-year-old statues and carvings.

I have been coming to China for several years, researching a book, and I love all of it for its beauty and the fascination it holds for me. Datong would not be in the first category; it is all concrete and covered with dust. But my research had prepared me for that. So, while I did not see any part of the city I could describe as attractive, I felt perfectly comfortable, even as the only foreigner wandering around the northern sector where I stayed.

My old, trusty Lonely Planet guidebook had advised that someone from the CITS (China International Travel Service) would be waiting at the exit of the railway station, as they wait for all foreigners coming by train; evidently I was the only one that afternoon.

Jin Wu Gao greeted me, and I followed him to his office. Before I knew it, he had assigned me to a hotel, booked a car and driver for my tours outside the city and arranged for my train ticket back to Beijing. I obligingly paid him up front, and ...

Wait a minute! I am an extremely independent traveler. Ordinarily I do not make reservations but go straight to the hotel I have chosen from my guidebook, then ask for the discounted room rate. But Gao was self-assured and inspired confidence, and his price of 160 yuan ($19.83) per night was the discounted rate, so it seemed silly not to go along with his assistance.

We set off for the hotel he had chosen, some blocks from the railroad station. As Gao walked with me, pulling my luggage along behind him, he stopped by a man working outdoors on a sewing machine. The strap on one of my bags had come loose, and the man fixed it. The cost: one yuan, or 12 cents. Life is simple.

In the morning I decided to move to a more convenient location, and chose the Hongqi Hotel near the railway station.

The Chinese hotel rooms I’ve stayed in tend to be similar, if not identical. The Hongqi was clean, modern, comfortable; my room included a full bath and a television.

Yungang, in the Wuzhou hills west of Datong, is one of the world’s great repositories of artistic spiritual expression. Here, in the 5th century, thousands of laborers and sculptors carved more than 51,000 bas-reliefs and statues of Buddha and other religious figures from the rock face. The largest statue is 55 feet tall.Buddhism was introduced into China from India around the 1st century AD, and the carvings at Yungang clearly were influenced by Indian sources--Shiva and other Hindu deities can be seen--as well as Byzantine and other cultures. In 1903 a Japanese academic drew attention to this sanctuary of Buddhist art, initiating an era of scholarly interest. Unfortunately, the attention also brought theft and desecration; roughly 700 images are missing.

The caves are dug out of a stretch of hillside more than half a mile long, one beside the next, all facing south. A wide, well-kept promenade in front gives access to the 21 (out of 53) that are open. In the off-season there were only a few knots of Chinese tourists sharing the late afternoon (the prime viewing time) scene.

I am not inexperienced in the matter of large Buddhas or Buddhist caves, having seen them here in China as well as in India and other parts of the Buddhist world. And I spent considerable time at the Getty Research Institute before leaving Los Angeles, studying photographs of Yungang in order to be aware of what to look for when I got there. But nothing prepared me for the enormity of these statues.

Most of the caves can be entered, but waist-high wood barriers stood in the entrances to numbers 11 to 13. I leaned in, peered up and literally recoiled; the size of these giants was astonishing.

I photographed the two I was most taken with. When I had the film developed, I saw that I had cut off their heads. But at least I left the statues intact.

Many of the niches were empty, scooped out like soft-boiled eggs. Nagel’s Encyclopedia-Guide China reports:

“During the first half of the [20th] century, countless foreigners came to see the shrines and used to mark the carvings which they liked with chalk: afterwards they came to an arrangement with the Chinese, who cut away the piece of their choice and sold it to them at the accepted price.”

Many can be seen in museums around the world.

Each cave in turn reveals a new treasury of carvings, original paint and all. In addition to the Buddha images and the bodhisattvas (akin to saints), there are haloed apsaras (celestial beings) playing musical instruments, processions, pagodas, elephants, emperors and disciples, all intricately carved into every inch of wall surface, some painted in a kaleidoscope of colors, others left in natural stone.

The Buddha in Cave 20, the one used in most promotional material, is 35 feet high and is exposed to the elements, as the cave’s front wall crumbled away very early on. As I gazed at it, an image flashed before my eyes, a recollection of the televised pictures of the Bamian Buddha in Afghanistan, explosions shattering it in the name of an antagonistic belief. I felt thankful that the Chinese have emerged from their own cultural nightmare and now work for preservation of these sites.

The next morning my CITS driver and I set off for Hengshan, 44 miles southeast of Datong. We crossed a brown, uninhabited moonscape, or so it appeared until a closer look revealed carefully terraced areas that were under cultivation, or soon would be.

Hengshan is one of Taoism’s five sacred mountains (Another, also called Hengshan, is in Hunan province.) Its 6th century monastery appears to cling to the mountain without any means of support.

To live in accordance with the Tao, the path of balance between humanity and nature, is to live in instinctive harmony with the universe. “This cannot be expressed in words, only experienced,” the Atlas of Sacred Places advises.

As we came around the base of the mountain and I caught my first glimpse of the Hanging Monastery, I was surprised that it was tiny, and not very far above ground level. The word that came to mind was “cute.” And as at so many places of interest, everywhere, the path leading up to it was lined with souvenir vendors.

I climbed the stairs and passed along old wooden walkways, halls and pavilions. The statues were serene. But there are no monks at Hengshan, and it did not seem real. I left with a feeling akin to having visited Disneyland.

On our way back to Datong we returned to reality. The villages we passed were built of mud and straw, reminding me of Africa, but the architecture was unique. Dwellings were built in rows with arched doors side by side. I recognized these buildings from the Chinese architecture books at the Getty, and we stopped so I could walk around. A woman took me by the hand up to a mud and straw mount, perhaps 20 feet high. It had an opening toward the top and barely discernible toeholds leading up to it. She gestured for me to climb and take a look inside, but I declined. (Later I learned that these mounts shelter underground homes, an evolution of cave dwellings, in areas of limited rainfall.)

Thinking these dwellings must have been built by one of China’s indigenous minority peoples, I asked Gao later, when I returned to Datong, which people they are. His answer: “Poor people.”

Another morning, another excursion--this time to the 900-year-old Wooden Pagoda, next to the Yingxian Fuogong temple, 50 miles south of Datong. There I bought incense for one yuan from a woman who helped me light it from the sticks already burning in the huge brazier. It was a quiet, contemplative place, the people kind and respectful.

In Datong I visited the Shanhua temple, just within the old city walls, built in 1128 to replace one destroyed by fire. The not-so-elaborate buildings felt old, a place of reverence for the past more than tourism. I liked it best of all the town’s sites.

The Huayan monastery, separated into upper and lower temple areas, was lovely and peaceful in the lower portion; the upper was closed for renovation.

The Nine Dragon Screen is a tiled remnant of the gated wall that shielded a Ming Dynasty imperial palace from commoners’ eyes. The screen is 18 feet high and 147 feet long, covered with glazed tile depicting nine yellow dragons. Standing in front, one can only wonder at the size and magnificence of the residence it concealed.

Time constraints kept me from visiting Datong’s other two tourist attractions: the locomotive factory and the Great Wall.

The morning of my departure, I left my hotel in the dark at 4:30. Gao had kindly arranged for me to be present at morning prayers and chanting in Huayan. At 6:30, when I emerged from the small side door of Upper Huayan, the sky was gray and overcast, perhaps a sign that it was time to be on my way.

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Guidebook: Jumping Off From Datong

* Getting there: Air China International flies nonstop from Los Angeles to Beijing four days a week; restricted round-trip fares start at $672. Connecting service (change of plane) is available on Northwest (fares start at $779), Air Canada ($737) and Korean ($919).

Trains to Datong leave Beijing’s main station; English-speaking ticket sellers work from an office in the rear of the soft-sleeper waiting room. I paid $3.84 for a “hard seat”; the “soft sleeper” (an upper berth) is $12.89. I splurged ($17.22) on a lower berth for the return to Beijing.

* Where to stay: Hongqi Hotel, Zhanqian Street No. 11, Datong City, Shangxi 037005; telephone 011-86-352-281-6823 or 281-6425, fax 011-86-352-281-6671. I paid 160 yuan ($19.83) per night; posted rates were above 400 yuan (based on the official exchange rate in April of 8.07 yuan to the dollar).

Yungang Hotel, 21 E. Yingbin Road, Datong 037008; tel. 011-86-352-502-1601, fax 011-86-352-502-4927. Posted rates were above 400 yuan; the discounted price was 350 yuan ($43.37), including breakfast. The rooms and amenities looked good, and it has a huge restaurant and a coffee shop, but it was not very appealing, nor as convenient as the Hongqi Hotel, so I stayed put.

* Where to eat: The Hongqi Restaurant near the Yungang Hotel is widely recommended, but I was not able to try it. A walk north a few blocks from the railway station, then a few blocks east takes you to a good-sized street (unnamed on the map for English speakers; it says only that it’s the road to Ulaanbaatar) that has a multitude of small, inexpensive restaurants.

I am most comfortable eating in small restaurants without an English menu or sign in English outside because I have a piece of paper on which various people have written, in Chinese characters, all the vegetables I can think of, plus chicken, pork and beef. On the back it says “small portion” so they don’t serve me the family platter. Another paper says that I cannot eat onions or garlic. With these notes and the word mifan (rice), I can eat almost anywhere. On average I pay 20 to 30 yuan for a meal ($2.48 to $3.72), which includes endless refills of tea.

* Getting around: The CITS price for a “tour”--a car and driver (who will not be English-speaking) to sites some distance outside Datong--is about 100 yuan ($12.39) per person for the day; it doubles if there is only one person. (It is advisable to stipulate that the driver should not do errands or bring his sister and her baby along for the ride.) The price does not include entry fees, which run about $4. At lunchtime, before your order is taken to the restaurant kitchen, check that the price is reasonable while you’re with the driver.

* For more information: China National Tourist Office, 600 W. Broadway, Suite 320, Glendale, CA 91204; tel. (818) 545-7507, fax (818) 545-7506, Internet https://www.cnto.org.