The History Trail (Part 1)

History sees every cilivization rise and fall, and China is no excpetion. Though now perceived by many to be the next great world power, it is easy to forget that just a few decades ago China was in every way a 3rd world country. But this is not the first sweepeing transformation to effect China; in ages past, the Chinese people have experienced everything from decades of civil war and abject poverty, to centuries of being the most civilized, cultured, advanced and powerful nation on earth. Far from the modern capital, the ancient works of this great civilization lie dotted around the landscape, just waiting for me to go in search of them.

My first stop is the dusty town of Datong, about an hour from the Inner Mongolian border. Like many small towns in China, ultra-rapid dvelopment has left Datong hanging in the balance between the rural village it once was and the modern city it is trying to become, with taxis blaring and honking past each other while the donkeys drag their carts obligingly alongside. The quirks of the town itself are not what I am there to see however; moments after arriving, I meet two German law students who study in Hong Kong, and together we leave on a road trip toward the dusty hills.

The scenery on the way is nothing short of magnificent, with vast dry plains and canyons announcing our proximity to Inner Mongolia, and the villages we pass on the way blend in with the dusty tones, looking more African than Chinese. Our taxi driver doesn't speak a lot of English, but makes up for it by smiling a lot. Even after we leave the city, he continues to use the same "driving a pregnant woman about to give birth to the hospital" driving technique taught to every Chinese taxi driver, regularly attempting to overtake on blind corners and speeding around precarious canyon bends with a recklessness that suggested he was a rally driver in a past life. If anyone reading this is planning a trip to these parts, learning to say "Watch out there's a huge truck speeding right towards us" in Mandarin would be time well spent.

Having safely arrived at our destination, we headed into the ancient Buddhist caves of Yungang to pray for safety on the next leg of our journey. Though it may not be readily apparent today, Datong was in fact once the capital city of China during the Northern Wei dynasty, during the 5th century AD, during which the government converted to buddhism and constructed a vast series of Buddhist caves to prove their faith.

I step through the threshold between light and darkness, into the hallowed twilight of the first cave. Upon entering, I find myself surrounded by statues of all size and shape, from the angelic Asparas on the roof far above to the legions of serene stone buddhas and bodhisattvas carved into the rock face, with a few stone murals depicting events in the Buddha's life thrown in for good measure. I am told that the cave contains an amazing mixture of artistic styles, with influences from India, Persia, and even Greece, a legacy of trade from the silk road, but most of the subtleties are lost on me. Like most tourists here I am simply amazed by the scale, grandeur, and beauty of the statues themselves. The variety of statues depicted is amazing, ranging in size from the tiny niches covering the "thousand buddha cave" (though I didn't count) to the 17m high Shakyamuni looking down upon us mere mortals, to the hundreds and thousands (51,000, I am told) of other statues of disciples and enlightened beings cut into the stone walls. They make no effort to acknowledge me as I leave; they just sit there, meditating, as they have been for over a thousand years, and as I expect they will until the day I die, and then long after.

Our next destination is a bit more far flung, and the taxi driver resorts to loud music to keep him alert. Not the syrupy Chinese pop we are used to however, but rather one continuous track of Indian sounding music (although the driver assures us it is French), carrying on for hours without the singer drawing so much as a single breath. Then again, what is a road trip without music?

Having left civilization behind long ago, we head further and further into the horizon, winding our way through looming granite peaks as we make our way to our destination, the secluded Hanging Monastery. Situated in a valley surrounded by towering mountains in every direction, the monastery was once a place of withdrawal and isolation for its resident Buddhist-Confucian-Taoist monks. However, they made the mistake of constructing it on the granite cliff-face itself, hanging precariously on wooden beams, which centuries later proved to be such a hit with tourists that the place would never be quiet and secluded again. Like many Chinese tourist attractions, it bears a striking resemblance to disneyland; overpriced, overcrowded and stripped of any cultural integrity. We take our photos and leave as quickly as possible. The Indian music begins once more, and we are off to our next destination.

The taxi driver is always keen to show us his cunning in avoiding speed cameras and police cars, so I am hardly suprised when, grinning, he points to the tollgate ahead before making a turn off into a nearby corn field. As we drive through the most amazingly disintegrated roads I have ever seen, we pass a few farmers hand-picking the corn in their field. The scene is gorgeously rustic, and we ask the taxi driver to stop for a moment. No doubt already amused at the sight of a taxi struggling through their corn-fields, having three curious looking foreigners pop their heads out the window and ask for a photo proves too hilarious for them to contain themselves. They are still laughing as our taxi drives out of the field to rejoin the highway on the other side of the toll gate, no doubt with a good story to tell their families that night.

We make our way back to Datong, and leave the city just as quickly as we arrived, on a sleeper train heading South.

When I groggily emerge from the train the next morning, I am in Pingyao, another famous historical city. Here no road trip is neccesary, as the city itself is the main attraction. Unlike many of China's other Ming and Qing dynasty cities, Pingyao had the good fortune not to be bulldozed and turned into apartment locks, and as a result is left today much the same way it has been for centuries. My rickety "taxi" takes me throgh the ancient city walls, marking the coundary between the modern city, and all its concrete and white tiles, and into a very different world of narrow laneways, rustic wooden buildings and swaying lanterns.

Finding history in this city is as simple as checking into your hotel. With the abundance of historical buildings, it is simply not possible to find accomodation anywhere less than one hundred years old. For $6 a night, I stay in a room on the second story of a beautiful courtyard home, which used to belong to the governor of the region, looking more like a temple than a backpackers' hostel. Walking two steps ourside the door of the hostel, I am standing in the middle of a street that looks like a movie set. Such is the beauty of Pingyao.

However, though the main streets may have immense superficial beauty, it does not take long to see the effect that tourism has had on the city. The streets are lined with centuries-old buildings, but almost all have been converted to souvenier stands, and above the swaying lanters blowing in front of beautiful curved roofs make for a fantastic photo, but are almost certainly modern additions to make it look more picturesque, part of the Chinese government's attempts to turn the city into another of its infamous Disneylands.

Leave the main streets however, and it is a very different story indeed. Hopelessly lost one day, I somehow manage to leave the main streets and walk all the way to the outskirts of the city, and find myself in a neighbourhood where the developers and tourists have not yet reached. Here, walnut-skinned farmers lie their produce our on the stone paths for the sun to dry, while in the corners and on the rooftops, huge piles of corn from harvest lie waiting to be sorted. There are none of the movie-set curved roofs and swaying lanterns here; the buildings are all made of stone, with flat square rooftops acting as courtyards for storing produce in. Many of the buildings and streets are in a state of disrepair, with some homes completely collapsed, but still these muddy dirt streets and piles of rubble feel much more like the "town that time forgot" than the shiny movie-set main streets.

In the streets the children sit quietly doing their homework, and upon seeing a foreigner they come alive, souting "Hello! Welcome!" to the smiling figure aimlessly wandering through their streets. Even the wedding procession I stumble upon seems overjoyed to have a lost foreigner in attendance; people wave to me from the back tray of a truck making its way through the dirt streets, occasionally letting off firecrackers loud enough to set off the car alarms in the streets nearby. It seems that an old neighbourhood is not neccesarily a quiet neigbourhood.

Later that evening, I accidentally find what appears to be an unguarded path onto the famous city walls, which are normally accessible only buy an extraordinarily pricey entrance ticket. Once I have clambered on, I amble around the walls until sunset, to capture a few more of my "ancient-wall-stretching-into-the-distance" photos and look out over the city below. Around the centre of the city is the picture-perfect view of ancient China, an endless complex of beautiful curved rooftops...which are still under construction. On the outskirts of the city lies the true ancient China, piles of corn sit on crumbling stone rooftops, the people quietly living out their traditional way of life below...