Cultural Emersion 101

I have posted a slideshow on flickr of the encounter below. The photos are the best part so i will post the link first and let you decide in which order to view/read. Click here: This is the updated working link so click on it and then click on slideshow on the top right corner.

http://flickr.com/gp/20899034@N03/Hu297j

This past weekend i went to the city of DaTong in the north of my province. i went with some friends so do some sightseeing. The city itself was the dirtiest place i have ever been. Dusty dry climates, smog, and coal dust permeated the city. luckily we had better things to see lined up. We went to some Grottoes nearby which are hundreds of ancient buddhist cave-temples. i found this quote with some stats:53 grottoes in Yungang Grottos include some 1,000 niches with about 51,000 statues" With so many niches, i thought that this picture was appropriate to sum up my visit there......... once you've seen a thousand buddha statues carved into a wall, there's not really much point in seeing the other 50,000. That is..... unless your chinese and your traveling with a foreigner named Daniel. Then its obviously necessary to see a photograph them all.

The next day we went to Heng Shan mountain. In case you were wondering, it is the 5th most important Daoist Holy mountain in all of China although significantly less important than the other 4. But still, pretty cool. The weather was great and by the time we HIKED (woohooo! for hiking) up to the temple, the scent of coal dust and grime had been replaced by mountain pine and flowers.

Amazingly after two days of being outside in blinding sunlight, with no sunscreen, and lost of PR, i finished the day a the hanging temple. The hanging temple is at the base of the mountain in the side of a cliff. it was built 490AD and since maintained and restored a few times. pretty cool huh. The train ride the requires a face to face recollection so i will save it for skype.