Shanxi

For me mid-semester trip I chose to go to Shanxi. Originally, I had wanted to go to Shandong, home of Confucius and beautiful Mount Tai. Unfortunately, I'm the only one who signed up, so I ended up having to choose another trip. Xi'an sounds like an amazing city, but I didn't really want to be with seventy students and from what I heard the trip was much more rushed than anything I would have liked. As it was, I found our trip to Shanxi much to rushed.

This was my first train trip in China. The Beijing West Station is enormous and visiting it was an experience in and of itself. The trip out was on a "Hard Seat" car while the trip back was on a "Soft Seat" car. The "Soft Seat" car reminded me of an airplane while the "Hard Seat" car was just an amazing experience. The highlight was when Devin had an argument with a college student about the status of Taiwan. I think the issue is very complicated, I don't really know enough, and I didn't want to make a statement, but the atmosphere was getting tense, so I told the student in broken Chinese "Taiwan belongs to the People's Republic of China." His face lit up and he thanked me in bad English. As the train rolled through the Hebei and Shanxi countryside I saw towering mountaineous vistas, endless canyons, industrial areas reminiscent of New Jersey, goat herders on barren hillsides, cute sheep and goats, peasants living in quaint villages growing rice and wheat, endless corn fields and wheat fields reminscient of upstate New York, and some very empty lands in a country I had come to associate with massive crowds of people. I would see much more of the upstate New York- like portion of the Shanxi countryside while on the bus tour. On the bus ride down I befriended two college students from Beijing.

Datong is not an impressive city, but the hotel was nice and we were there mostly to see the stuff near it, not the city itself. The first place we went was this nine-dragon wall which was beautiful. After that we went to the Yungang caves. The caves were some of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I would say it is the most beautiful work of art I've ever seen in my entire life. Carved 1500 years ago, the massive caves contain 51,000 carved images of Buddhist and Daoist figures, as well as Chinese emperors. Some of the caves were still vividly colorful. All were absolutely amazing. Some had Buddhist statues 100 feet tall. Others had thousands of small images. All of it was beautifully preserved from thousands of years ago. It was overwhelming.

Afterwards, we visiting the hanging monastery (actually an ancient inn for pilgrims) which is amazingly built on the side of a mountain and held up with stilts. Mom would not have liked it. It was beautiful and had a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains. Met a Daoist monk there visiting Shanxi. Looked kind of like my brother with his ponytail. We ate lunch that day in People's Liberation Army restaurant! This fun themed restaurant is run by real PLA soldiers who bring you food and sing karaoke (the Chinese army really is way too big). It was fun.

Sunday morning we visited the old well preseverd town of Pingyao, which gives a good view of what life was like in ancient urban China. In a preserved old police station for only one Chinese dollar you could play with the ancient swords, spears, maces, and axes and take pictures! Speaking of weapons, I bought a pair of nunchucks (shuangjiegun in Chinese) from a tourist stand on the street for seven Chinese dollars, very cute. Also got some postcards and beads.

Another fun moment was when a former Chinese soldier (probably over 60) started flirting with two of the girls on in my group. He was very funny and asked me if I was in the American army.

Today, we had an ethnic Bai from Yunnan come talk to us. He went to school in the US and has been working with NGO's in China for fifteen years, many doing Environmental work. It was great talking to him.