Walking the plank on Hua Shan

What could be better than climbing one of China's sacred Buddhist mountains? Climbing TWO of them. After some down time in Pingyao we headed to another of China's famous Buddhist sites: Hua Shan. This mountain is absolutely spectacular - it literally seems to thrust vertically straight out of the expansive flatlands below. Totally different from Wutai Shan, Hua Shan is a giant granite monolith with sheer imposing cliffs on all sides - imagine a very large version of the Chief in Squamish, BC sprinkled with few Buddhist temples on top. Best of all you get to walk the plank...

As soon as I saw this place, I couldn't help but think that the rock climbing here would be amazing with gigantic cracks snaking accross these immense granite faces. I didn't actually look into whether or not people had ever climbed there independently, but I am guessing that since it is a protected site there would probably be restrictions on that sort of thing.

Being China, the first thing to do with a sacred mountain is to build a really expensive cable car to the top. In fact, this site must be extra special since it actually has TWO cable cars. With the gondolas acting as a large conveyor belt for Chinese tour groups, the summit had a bit of the feel of an amusement park with restaurants and souvenir shops scattered everywhere. It was a bit more touristy than I expected, but the scenery was still well worth fighting the crowds on the summit. The good thing was that once we got on the trail it was easy to find some space for ourselves. The mountain itself is made of five separate granite peaks with trails that run between - note that these trails are definitely not for those who don't like heights. They don't call this "China's most dangerous mountain" for nothing.

In order to try and beat the crowds we decided to hike to the summit from town first thing in the morning leaving on the "Pilgrims trail" around 6am. The trail is very well maintained, and climbs to the summit after passing through a Taoist temple near the base of the mountain. The hike up was a great morning workout climbing about 1000m, along a very well maintained trail to the North summit. From there we walked the "Dragons Back", a narrow granite arete, to reach the east, south and west summits. Luckily for us, in recent years China has made some safety improvements adding stairs, chains, and handrails on some of the more dangerous parts (I am not sure if they can keep claiming the "most dangerous mountain" title).

Some of the "sky ladders" were so steep that they were actually overhanging steps! But there were chains.... which sort of made it a little safer? Here I am negotiating a solid 5.10a move over a bulge.... this staircase is actually vertical.

Hiking over to the east peak we got some amazing views of the surrounding mountains and the other peaks of Hua Shan:

Although we couldn't rock climb at Hua Shan, there was still the opportunity to come pretty darn close - Hua Shan is the home of China's famous plank walk: the self-proclaimed "Most dangerous hike on earth!". This hike is absolutely terrifying. In order to reach a small Buddhist shrine perched in the middle of the South face of the mountain, you need to walk along a plank walkway that is cantilevered off of a sheer rock face about 1000m above the valley floor! You do get a harness, which you clip onto steel cables bolted into the wall but it is nonetheless scary as hell. Here is my list of sketchy things about this walk which makes it so terrifying: 1. they only give you a CHEST harness (all the rock climbers reading this are probably saying WTF right now...), 2. this is a one way hike, which you then have to backtrack running into people coming the opposite direction with a cluster-f**k of carabiners, 3. you are completely responsible for clipping in and out of the safety cable on your own (at least Marie and I have enough rock climbing experience to know not to unclip BOTH tethers at the same time - unlike some others on the walk).

Highly recommended if you like pooping your pants.

After our climb of Hua Shan, we needed something a little more laid back the next day so we checked out the Xiyue temple in Huayin (the name of the town at the foot of Hua Shan) which gave a pretty good view of the whole city from the main tower.

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The Ancient City of Pingyao

Pingyao is a well preserved ancient city enclosed on all sides by a 10m high stone wall built in 1370. The walls are original and only a small section was re constructed in 2004 when it collapsed. All the buildings within the walls look original and you really get a sense of what it would feel like to have lived here in that period.

The first thing we did when we arrived was head to the wall. It was pretty amazing to walk along a wall that is 645 years old! You could see the bricks and mortor wearing at the base of the wall and at the entrance gates there were noticeable grooves in the stone floor from centuries of old wagon wheels (The wheels used to be covered with a metal strip).

There were a few old government buildings here as well. One of which was Rischengchang Financial House Museum which was China's first draft bank in 1823. They had some old offices with original furnishings set up. After looking through a couple of offices I was really starting to wonder why they had setup the old offices like bedrooms until I realized that what we Westerners see as beds are actually large elevated seating platforms with a thin mat and a small table: the Kang bed. We also saw a few abacuses laying around!

We did visit our first Catholic church! Although it was not very well maintained.

We stayed in a courtyard type hotel located in the centre of the ancient city. The coolest part about the place was the Kang bed - It was so big!

Unfortunately we both ended up with a cold so it turned out to be a good place to recharge.

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Welcome to Shanxi

Datong is a city of 1.1 million people and located south-west of Beijin in Shanxi province. Lonely Planets' description says "Its coal-belt setting and a socialist-era refashioning have robbed Datong of most of its charm. The city has, however, ploughed mountains of cash - estimated 50 billion yuen (10 billion USD) - into a colossal renovation program of its old quarter". The only reason we ended up staying there was because it's a good base to visit the Yungang Caves and the Hanging Temple and we weren't really expecting much. We were wrong - Datong still has its charm!

Getting to Datong from Beijing is a seven hour train ride. We had our first China train experience - it was amazing! There are four ticket options: standing (no way), hard seat (similar to a city bus seat), hard sleeper (a bed in a dorm-like car with a total of about 30) and a soft sleeper (four beds in a more private room). We opted for the hard sleeper which turned out to be incredibly comfortable! Since we took an early train we basically went back to sleep once we got on the train so we were pretty fresh when we arrived in Datong!

The city itself has two parts: the ancient walled city and everything outside of it. The "colossal renovation" that was described in Lonely Planet was immediately apparent. It looks like everyone that lived within the walls were relocated, the old buildings torn down and new traditional looking buildings constructed. The actual 10km wall that encloses the ancient city has been completely rebuilt as well as the moat.

As we walked along the wall we got a good view of all the construction cranes building an incredible amount of new apartment buildings outside the walled city.

The best part - there was hardly anyone on the wall with us. After the throngs of people in Beijing we revelled in all the free space!

After our first few hours in Datong we realized that this city must not see many foreigners. People were staring at us, sneaking pictures or just blatingly coming up and asking to take photos with them. After this happened a few times, we also started taking photos with our camera to see if we could keep a log!

As an example of how nice randome people were to us: At dinner that night we asked for some tea with dinner. Apparently we originally incorrectly ordered and got pear juice so I got up and went to the table next to us and pointed at their tea pot. Everyone was now confused and a there was a big discussion. The woman at the table with the tea got up and gave us one of her tea packages. That's when we realized that you have to bring your own tea leaves! As we left the restaurant, I thanked her in Chinese "XieXie" they all loved it and then asked for photos.

Our first trip was to the Hanging Temple, which is about a 1.5 hour drive south.

We arrived, yet again, to another site with hoards of people. It was the Sunday of their labour day weekend... The temple itself looks really impressive and structurally unsafe (although we were assured by Didier, the structural engineer guru, that it is cantilevered off the rock so not to worry). However because of the amount of people, I found it hard to not get frustrated and distracted. We waited in line for about an hour to even get into the temple. If you have ever waited in a line in China you know, there is no actual line, no personal space or sense of organization. It's every person for themselves. If someone in line moves up in front of you, you just move up and fill in that gap because if you don't, someone behind you will. Once in the temple we walked along the narrow overhanging balconies in awe that it's actually still standing and wondering if it would hold the hundreds of people on it! We did see a few of the columns (poles?) wobble as people were walking on the balcony above us!

It was definitely worth the trip but should have waited until after the holiday.

On our way back we jumped in a shared taxi where we met a couple who were excited to share the ride with foreigners. They are students at Datong University and we chatted the entire way back in a combination of basic English words, sign language and our various translating apps. When we arrived back in Datong they invited us to have lunch with them: beef noodle soup and sliced cucumber salad. What turned out to be the most surprising for them was that we were Westerners that could use chopsticks! As we went to pay the bill, we found out that they had paid for our lunch!

Our second trip was to the Yungang Caves. This was an easy 30 minutes trip away from the city on a double decker city bus.

We were so happy when we arrived to find that there was hardly anyone at this site! The Yungang Caves are one of China's best example of Buddhist art. It was built in the 5th century and holds 51,000 statues in 252 caves.

Look how small I am - bottom left corner.

The carvings were incredible and it felt like being in an Indiana Jones epic! There were a few really big statues and then some caves filled entirely will miniature carvings. What made this place so unique is that the caves are all carved out of the rock faces!

Once again, we were asked for photos.

What you don't see is that there are actually 5 people taking pictures. Even people that don't know the women in the picture with me!

The last thing Tom wanted to do before leaving Datong was get a haircut. In the end I decided to cut my hair a bit shorter too (easier to air dry!). It was definitely a challenge explaining how we wanted our hair cuts. You should have seen me try to explain that I wanted my hair thinned out on the sides because it's too thick... Thank goodness for our Chinese translating app. It turned out exactly as we wanted! (photos)

I think what made the time we had in Datong so great was actually the people. We met some genuinely nice and curious locals. We found that as we walked down the streets people would stare with this serious confused expression but the second we smiled back or said "Nihao" (hello) a huge smile would appear. Kids yelled "hello" and some would be encouraged by their parents to use their few english words. If we asked anyone for directions, a group of strangers would suddenly come together to discuss and come to an agreed answer for us. All would be smiling and excited to see Canadians travelling through their country.

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