I arrived in Bloomington 24 hours ago, happily (using air miles) via First Class on American. It seemed a fitting way to end a First Class journey around the world—after a 6 hour train from Datong to Beijing.
There were two newsworthy articles this morning in the Wall Street Journal relevant to the trip. One was the slowdown in India (based partly on the slowdown elsewhere in the world), and the slowdown in China. You definitely have to read the non-Chinese press in particular to get that impression, though between the lines, you can tell there are some cracks in the picture of progress China presents.
The Chinese government vocabulary emphasizes the need for social stability; its contract is continued power in return for generating continued prosperity—even if that means stimulating the economy through an economic package that tends to favor domestic consumption.
The emphasis on social stability was visible in at least two places where one might not have expected it. The first was in the Confucian temple in Beijing. We got there in time to see a dance performance based on the teachings of Confucius. Part of the message was about “social stability.” The Chinese phrase was, “Tian xia wei gong,” one of the teachings of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, roughly translated as “The Earth Belongs to the People.” You can find that on the gateway to almost every Chinatown in the United States (see Chicago’s, if you doubt me). That Confucius is revered today is a remarkable change from the Mao past, when the “New China” meant demolishing the old.
The second clue is the “Beijing Spirit” motto: “Patriotism, Innovation, Inclusiveness, and Virtue.” The last named is also part of the Confucian ethic.
The “New New China” with its emphasis on the “New Old” indicates to me that Mao in remaking China missed some of the good in the old. What sounds like thunder in China, in other words, is really Mao turning in his grave.
And so the adventure ends–and I’m ready for the next one!
Reminiscence 2025. Hard to believe, but this was my last brush with Asia. I wonder how much has changed, especially after COVID.
On the way in to Datong, my guide pointed out the new buildings on the far side of the river, which included the government center, apartment buildings, and so forth. She noted that the government decided to move away from the older area of the city to foster tourism, and prepare for the day when the coal mines, the backbone of the local economy, give out. Somebody must be reading my blog! The question I had, however, was—what does Datong have that would attract tourists? Of course, it has (like everywhere in China), at least 2,000 years of history, but what’s left? And what will attract people to come here? That was the quest for today.
My conclusion is that if it’s your first trip to China, and you have two or three weeks, Datong is not likely to be on your list. But in the name of fairness, let me tell you about the attractions of the city and area, which, if it doesn’t sway you to put Datong on that first trip list, might encourage a visit sometime; bear in mind, it took 22 years of China visits before I found my way here. After all, it has a well known coal mine museum (which I skipped), and used to build locomotives (and thus had a locomotive museum for a long time—it’s now in Beijing.)
Datong historically has had two brief flirtations with fame, both involving dynasties beyond the wall. The first was the Northern Wei dynasty, which for nearly a hundred years made Datong its capital. (notice, the brief flirtation can last 100 years). Part of that imperial presence led to probably Datong’s greatest attraction (unless you’re a coal mine devotee),which are the Yungang caves. With about 51,000 statues in 49 grottoes, the sheer number alone should be reason to visit this world heritage site. In addition, the statues were carved in sandstone, so erosion has been a problem that the Chinese government has addressed partly by enclosing the most attractive treasures (and that not so coincidentally keeps the coal smoke out). The big statues (some are 60 feet high) are stunning, some of them with the original colors. My guide pointed out that in this early period the Buddhas still had Indian characteristics, though some of the “two Buddha caves” had Buddha heads that looked suspiciously like the Northern Wei emperor and his mom, under whose sponsorship the caves were built; one large statue was carved honoring one of the Wei emperors who tried to eradicate Buddhism—posthumously, of course. With the move to Luoyang in 492, the cave carving petered out, and eventually stopped. We visited 20 of the 49 grottoes; I went on to another 19, and there was only one where I stopped to take a picture.
From the sublime to “over the top”. In line with the “creation” of a tourist
base, the Datong government has recreated a “Northern Wei” palace on the way in that it has buildings and figures resembling those in the caves, and a “new old” city on the way out, full of merchants offering mostly the same merchandise you see everywhere in China. It is becoming a pattern in China. Get em in and keep em shopping. I was the only westerner there this morning.
The second flirtation with fame that redounds to Datong’s reputation was the Liao period, the 12th century, when Datong was a first tier second tier city, below the capital. It enjoyed imperial blessing again, which led to serious temple building, with a very distinctive art form. Many of the buildings have been destroyed over the years, but a restoration under the Ming/Qing rulers kept some of them intact—and since the 1990s, many more have been reconstructed. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between the old and the “new old”.
The third claim to fame is based on its location. As my guide proudly stated, Datong is the only major Chinese city between the Great Wall to keep the northern barbarians out and the inner wall to keep the Chinese in. As a border station, it was important in the Han dynasty (there is a portion of the Han great wall here) and the Ming Great Wall (which is in the process of being rebuilt). In fact, there is a major effort by the new mayor to create a new old city, which is already underway. There is a nine-dragon wall that used to be in front of the Ming governor’s palace in the early Ming period.
The governor could have a dragon wall because he was the thirteenth son of the Emperor. The wall was moved to a former temple when the palace was torn down years ago, but the wooden frame of its replacement is underway, in a swath of buildings cleared to make the “new old” city.
The new mayor might not have said, “If you build it, they will come,” but he is banking Datong’s future on its past.
Words failed Li Bing when he saw the last temple I saw today. The famous Tang poet could only inscribe “magnificent” on a rock, but added a dot after zhuang guan, an exclamation point in a language that has none.
He might have been thinking about the kind of day I had, which began when we left Pingyao for the 250 or so mile trip to Datong, one that was literally a high (8,000 feet). The first stop should have been the clue—one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains, Wutaishan rises to 2100 meters and has five peaks (hence the name; wu means five). Here’s what I remember:
-The first temple (we visited it) began shortly after the introduction of Buddhism into China from India, around 70 A.D. Subsequent temples pushed the total up into the hundreds, though today there are only 47. To see them all, my guide suggested, would take half a month.
-“base camp” is over a mile high, providing a cool environment in the summer.
-one of the temples has a white dagoba, an Indian shaped pagoda that looks something like a bowling pin. Reputedly, it is the largest in China. The signpost said that it was originally built with the help of the great Indian King, Asoka, but I don’t think the timing works. It was enlarged later, and is reputed to hold relics of the Lord Buddha.
-a temple built in 1921 has the largest marble arch in China. (everything is largest something or another)
108 steps was a lucky Buddhist number–and mine since it was going down
-with the eminent Buddhists of the Qing dynasty claiming to have been descended from the Buddha disciple Manjuri (based on the similarity in the pronunciation of the Manchus), they took a fondness to the site because the temples are dedicated to Manjuri (from what my guide said, each of the famous Buddhist mountains is dedicated to one of the major Bodhisattvas). And given the fondness of the Qing for the Tibetan Lama Buddhism, it is no surprise that the temples have a lama orientation, some markedly so. The one we visited had been sequestered by Kangxi, who came five times, and because he turned it into a royal temple, it has a gold roof, and the largest wooden archway in Wutaishan. It also has 108 stairs, which is a solemn number in Buddhism, and a good number for me, because we were going down it. There were a number of steles with poetry or inscriptions by Kangxi and Qianlong, who seemed to have visited a lot of places in their 120 years of rule, and left lots of stone steles.
Our next stop on the ride to Datong was a wooden pagoda, but not just a wooden pagoda—the tallest in China. It dates from the short-lived Liao dynasty (somewhere in the 1100s), and also contains relics (I.e., body pieces) from the Lord Buddha. The Buddha is Liao style—with a green beard and moustache (since the Liao, a people from north of the wall—i.e., barbarians) had mustaches, and, therefore, the Buddha would have to as well. Furthermore, the moustache beard was green because the Liao believed green was a sacred color. I told you Buddhism allowed local adaptations!
That the pagoda was in the small town it was because the emperor’s mother came from there, and she was a devout Buddhist. That the pagoda exists is due to its ability to survive two catastrophes in China:
1) An earthquake in the late Qing dynasty leveled the rest of the temple, but the tower survived because, being made of wood, it was flexible. As might be expected, a reconstruction of the temple is underway in the name of tourism.
2) The Cultural Revolution. Parts of the Buddha were hacked, and some documents which had been hidden in it were destroyed, including much of the history of the temple.
The last stop was the one Li Bing, a thousand years ago, called
“magnificent “—the hanging temple on Hengshan, another sacred mountain, this one to Daoism. Begun in the Song dynasty (or earlier), the temple looks like it ought to have a frame around it, and be sold as a 3 D insert; it literally clings to the side of a mountain It was built by monks who perched down from the top, put in beams, carved the caves, etc. It is a Daoist temple—but at least one room helps explain why it (and not much else on Hengshan) survived the Cultural (and other) revolution. One multicultural (my word, not the guide’s) room has: the Buddha in the center, one of the Daoist immortals on one side, and Confucius himself on the other . Rumor has it that one tablet was added during the Cultural Revolution—“Long Live Chairman Mao”. And that may well be why the Hanging Temple (truly magnificent, and fortunately, we do have an exclamation point in English!) exists today.
If you were looking for a city built to be a caricature of a Chinese city, you wouldn’t have to look far, at least not if you were in Pingyao, a world heritage Unesco city of nearly 50,000 people in Shanxi province. Unlike the similarly positioned Lijiang, in Yunnan, far from here, which had to be partially reconstructed after an earthquake, Pingyao, for all practical purposes, looks rather like the city it has been since 1370, when the Ming moved it a few kilometers and enclosed the city in a stately wall that still surrounds the “ancient” city.
It has what you’d need to make it into a tourist destination: quaint Ming and Qing dynasty houses easily turned into ambient guest houses and restaurants and small shops. Our day began with a made-for-tourist celebration that consisted of young ladies on parade dressed in Qing costumes, imitating women with bound feet (some emperor liked it, so for centuries rich women broke the toes of their daughters to make them more attractive—only peasant women had regular sized feet). The practice was not banned until the 20th century. The ladies were followed by jugglers, and the festivities culminated in a processional for the governor and his entourage.
The Scholar’s Tower–even before I got there
We then walked along the wall, originally built in 1372, and relatively intact since then. It is about 6 miles long, but nowhere near as wide as the one in Xi’an. Most of the buildings in it are Ming/Qing, with some more recently built. There was one factory which the government evicted, and as our guide noted, some of the land was given to developers for hotels, etc. Tourism, as I have been saying this whole trip, is the world’s biggest business, and China has some of the best infrastructure in the world for the business. It is a big revenue generator. Ticket prices for attractions have gone up greatly; the city tour package is over 30$ US. The government is developing the tourist trade for domestic Chinese. I am one of the few non-backpacking Americans here, and there was a BIG crowd this weekend. The guides have taken to using megaphones, even for groups of 3 or 4, which makes some places impossibly noisy. One year I saw there were 15 million tourists!
The bank
Among other visits in the city was one to China’s first bank, here in Pingyao in 1823. It handled bank transfers in over 20 cities, including Calcutta in India and Kowloon in Hong Kong, and lasted until the 1930s or so. It sounded like the Hanseatic League, with “internships” for young Chinese more interested in commerce (and wealth) than in government and Chinese classics. At one time, 90% of China’s banking service was done by Shanxi financiers, and much of that in Pingyao.
If you were looking for temples, this had some 4 star attractions. One, close to the city, and named for an episode in the life of the Buddha, had some statues that date back to the Song dynasty, or almost 1000 years ago. Some of the statues retained their original colors, and the 1000 armed Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy (who in the process of moving from India to China became more feminine than masculine) is particularly striking. In addition to the Buddhist temples, there was a city god temple, a Daoist celebration reconstructed during the reign of Qianlong, with a statue to the Guan Gong, my candidate to replace Tommy Titan. The Guan Gong is celebrated as the God of Wealth and the God of War, the former of which puts him pretty high in today’s Chinese pantheon (socialism with Daoist characteristics?). Across from that, there is a Confucian temple that purports to be one of the best still extant in China (Confucius came in for a battering during the Cultural Revolution, as one of the “olds,” but I’ll have more to say about its revival before I leave China). There are some nice exhibits on the Confucian exams in the temple, which was one of the most serene places in the city. There are even two Christian churches from the early 20th century, one Catholic, one Protestant, which I understand are packed on Sundays.
Governor’s Place
The other striking public building is the home of the governor, which is residence, administrative offices, and jail—all in one place. The striking thing was the jail and prison, partly because in criminal court cases, the plaintiff and defendants both knelt down in a specific spot before the judge, who could use torture (the tools of the trade were there, including knuckle busters) to extract confessions. A red colored piece of wood signified death, and we saw, in the prison, the various forms of punishment, which ranged from public humiliation to beheading, to the “death by 1000 cuts,” which consisted of having your body wrapped in a fishnet, squeezed, and the skin that protruded sliced.
I said this is the ideal model for what foreigners (and Chinese) think is a model Ming/Qing city. I’ve been to others which have rebuilt areas like this—I think it was Kaifeng or Luoyang, former capitals. I know Xi’an has an area near the south wall that has a reconstructed “antique street” that is no more antique than the last four or five years. The difference is that Pingyao has an antique street that is an antique, and limits cars to the edges of the old walled city. It is a model—but it is an original, not a copy
In effect, the class ended when we arrived back in Beijing on Friday. We all had a free afternoon and evening to do last minute things—whether it was visit the zoo to see pandas, the pearl market to buy copies or real pearls, or to sample the night life (my recommendation was the Banana club. “did you like it Hoyt?” “No, but that means you will.”)
I did a few things I wanted to do. I went out for lunch with our guide, who asked whether I had ever eaten donkey, which he said was a Beijing specialty. Check that off my list of things to do. He said he’d had only one other tour leader sample the dish, and that person was lukewarm. I’d do it again—especially if any of those burros at Philmont give me a hard time.
We were near Liulizhang, which used to be the scholar/artist street. It’s still quaint, but in the current effort to build tourism, is a mix of older buildings built to look old, and older buildings that are. I stopped in to the tea shop I’ve frequented for seven years, the owner reminded me, and asked about my former student, JR Glenn, who has been there with me several times. I couldn’t leave without buying my favorite tea, liqi hong, a black tea flavored with lichee. I have never found it in the United States.
There was one other place on my itinerary—the summer palace built by
Qianlong that was destroyed in 1860; I had been there only once. It’s on the outskirts of the city, but Beijing is fairly easy to navigate (thank you 2008 Olympics!) with 14 lines and a 30 cent fee for busses or subways. The buildings were mostly European style, and made of stone. The rubble remains as a haunting reminder of what happened to China during its century of humiliation. There were lakes as well, a legacy of Kangxi’s trips to the South, and especially the storied gardens of Suzhou and Hangzhou, which shaped the construction of the summer villa we saw at Chengde.
For a last meal with my colleague Ruth Ann, we went to nearby Wan fu jing street, the “Michigan Avenue” of China. Passing through food street with its vendors selling everything from scorpion on a stick to dumplings, passing the old Catholic church, rebuilt after being destroyed by the Boxers (where a large crowd had gathered doing line dancing on Friday night), we went to Quanjude, the largest roast duck chain in the city. The hotel recommended it, and responded in the positive when I asked whether Chinese ate there (or whether it was primarily a tourist attraction). Beijing does attract tourists, Chinese and foreign, but we were the only Westerners in the restaurant.
At 4:30 am, I bade farewell to my 14 traveling companions, as they boarded the bus to the airport.
And my adventure alone began. I got a bullet train to Taiyuan. It’s around 300 miles southwest of Beijing—and it took 4 hours to get there. For those of you who have been on Chinese trains, you should be astonished—the ordinary train takes 8 hours. The cost was around $25!
Taiyuan is not a tourist destination, being an old city that has more history than historical artifacts, and is currently a center of heavy industry. We did see two interesting sites, nonetheless. One was a temple dedicated to a general, which had a 3200 year old tree, and some unusual construction including a cross bridge, with a Daoist half and a Buddhist half. The other was the home of a rich family that had business scruples (Confucian in origin, like treating people fairly) and moral scruples (no concubines), and lasted as a wealthy family for five generations. The compounds (two generations added to the construction, and included a stage for performing Shanxi opera) have been turned into a museum to showcase local customs and art, as well as to tell the story of the Qiao family. The wealth initially came from making bean curd (tofu), and wound up as banking/trading operation with locations all over China (except Gansu and Yunnan, I believe). The family housed Cixi when she fled Beijing after the 8 armies suppressed the Boxers, and she gave them presents in return, including the right to call the house the best courtyard in China (sounds like something the Chamber of Commerce would designate); they gave her a month lodging, 300000 tales of silver, and apparently greased the wheels of the successors, which kept the house intact until the family fled the Japanese in 1937.
Rather than stay in Taiyuan, my guide took me to Pingyao for two evenings, and that’s a different blog and a very different experience. I’ll send this when I can. Pingyao is an “ancient city” surrounded by a Ming dynasty wall, and minimum amenities. I’d say it’s like Lijiang in Yunnan, but none of you have been there, so I’ll tell you about it after I’ve toured it.
