Hanging Monastery

Hanging Monastery Picasa Photo Album

After visiting the Yungang Caves in the morning, Liu Kai and I went to the Hanging Monastery in the afternoon. The monastery is 1400 years old. It's a series of buildings built right into the side of a cliff, apparently supported by stilts. The buildings are joined by some rickety-looking bridges. The entire thing certainly looks dangerous, but it was crawling with tourists the day we were there.

Check out these stilts!


The guy in the middle was a guy named Jeremy who was from New York and came on the same tour as we did.









Liu Kai.




The waterfall in the background certainly added something to the scenery.

Even though this looks extremely dangerous, it's not as bad as it seems. Our tour guide told us the stilts are purely for looks. When the monastery was built, they drilled holes way back into the cliff face, and there are supporting logs that were put into the holes. For each log, two-thirds is in the whole, and only one-third is out of the rock, supporting the buildings and bridges. Still, the stilts add a nice touch :).

This was the last place we went on our trip. We caught a night train back to Beijing that evening (and this time we got beds!), and then I took a train back to the school the next morning.

Yungang Caves

Yungang Caves Picasa Photo Album

After visiting Pingyao and stopping at the Qiao Family House on the way to Datong, we only spent one day in Datong. Datong itself is nothing special; it's a pretty dull, boring, polluted city (the pollution is particularly bad because it's a major coal producer in China). But there are a couple of really amazing sites just outside of Datong. We saw both of these the next day.

The first was the Yungang Caves. These caves contain a ton of Buddhist sculptures; Lonely Planet says the caves have over 50,000 statues. Work began on the caves around 460 AD, and took approximately 40,000 workers 64 years to complete (at least, that's what our tour guide told us). The caves were absolutely amazing. Words don't do them justice, so I'll skip straight to the pictures:

Buddha #1.


Some of the caves had tons of intricately carved work all around the cave, like this. Unfortunately, it was really hard to get good pictures because of the lighting.


The caves are spread across this cliff face.












Unfortunately, the caves have been vandalized a few times. Three sculptures were stolen from this carving.




This is the most well-preserved statue at the caves.


The people in the background will you give you some idea of the sheer size of this thing.

We visited the Hanging Monastery next.

Qiao Family Courtyard House

Qiao Family Courtyard House Picasa Photo Album

After spending two days in Pingyao, Liu Kai and I spent a day in transit to the city of Datong, in north Shanxi province. Along the way, we stopped at the Qiao Family Courtyard House. The Qiao family was a rich family during the Qing Dynasty. The entire complex has 6 courtyards and over 300 rooms. The house is primarily famous because it was used as the set for the movie Raise the Red Lantern, which I have not seen, but would like to know that I've been to the house and have heard of the movie. Apparently it's a very well done, artistic film (based on the info at imdb). I got the impression from Liu Kai that it's a movie that pretty much every Chinese person has seen. Anyhow, on to the pictures...

Pingyao

Pingyao Picasa Photo Album

As I mentioned previously, this past week was a week off from school, so I did some traveling. On Saturday, I took a night train from Beijing to Pingyao. Unfortunately, Liu Kai and I were unable to get a bed on the train, and so we were stuck sitting in a seat all night for all 12 hours of the train ride, due to the busy traveling of National Day holiday week. That said, I was thankful to at least have a seat--I think there were just as many people on our train without seats (who either stood or sat on the floor) as people with seats. It didn't help to arrive in Pingyao so tired, since I never really fell asleep on the train, but after taking a short nap at our hostel, I felt quite refreshed.

Pingyao is called "possibly the best-preserved ancient walled city in China" in Lonely Planet, and that description sums up the city nicely. It flourished as a merchant town during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and it still has the city walls and much of the architecture built at that time. It was also the first city to have banks and checks in China.

We stayed a total of two nights. Unfortunately, it rained on us almost the whole time, but that may have been a blessing in disguise since it seemed to keep the crowds low. On to the pictures...

The streets of Pingyao.





The Pingyao city walls.



Who needs firearms and WMD when you have weapons like these?


Getting impaled was a highlight of the trip.


I had forgotten how cool a wet spider web looks.


Liu Kai and I rented bikes during our 2nd day.


The local Catholic church.


Chinglish at its finest.

The next day we traveled to Datong in the north of Shanxi province, stopping at the Qiao Family Courtyard House on the way.

Travel Pictures

I'm back from traveling, and had a great time. I intend to write up a more extensive post about the trip later, but for the time being, if you want to see pictures, here you go:

Pingyao

Qiao Family Courtyard House

Yungang Caves

Hanging Monastery