Datong

We took another bus eastward, crossing the Yellow river at Wubao, and headed for Taiyuan, the capital of the coal rich Shanxi province. Soon we're traveling on a divided highway that looks brand new. The city of Taiyuan looks much more like Beijing, which I am familiar with. In the heat of summer people hang out in the shade on the wide boulevards. Taiyuan has some of the widest streets in China. We stayed in a nice hotel and explored local foods, then headed north to Datong. Datong was a former imperial capital during the 5th century, and there is another major grottoes of Buddhist imagery here - the Yungang Grottoes. The Buddha images were sculpted slightly earlier than the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, but they're in even better state of preservation. In Qing Dynasty (18th century) this place had been restored and new roof structures were built over some of the caves. Even though some of the older caves had collapsed ceilings exposing the huge buddha images to weather, a few others had colorful paint still intact on the sculptures and they are resplendent. It is an awe-inspiring sight. In Datong we also visited a famous nine-dragon screen, a very large wall with glazed bricks sculpted into nine dragons of different colors. It was formerly in the entry courtyard of a prince's residence here. Another interesting place in town was an 1000-year-old Buddhist temple still in active worship, it is an early precursor of the Zen (Chan in Chinese spelling) Buddhist sect.

From Datong we took a train to Beijing to meet up with my dad. The train winds through a beautiful, rugged canyon near several sections of the great wall. From the train windows we saw numerous fortifications, formerly garrison towns to protect the capital Beijing.