Datong, Great Differences｜Traversing Ancient and Modern Times · A Glimpse of a Thousand Years

Reading ten thousand books and traveling ten thousand miles. Travel is a good medicine that helps you heal all the unhappiness in life; travel is a small lamp that helps you rediscover beauty in the dark; travel is a journey of cultivation that allows you to feel and maintain a love for life. I am a time traveler. As the saying goes, 'For underground relics, look to Shaanxi; for above-ground relics, look to Shanxi.' Datong is the second largest city in Shanxi Province, one of the first batch of national historical and cultural cities, and one of China's nine ancient capitals, with a profound cultural heritage and numerous historical sites. I don't know when, but overnight, Datong in Shanxi became popular nationwide. Although I had planned to visit Datong a few years ago, work reasons always prevented me from going. This year, I finally made up my mind to take advantage of this wave of Datong fever and squeezed out two days to experience this thousand-year-old ancient capital. On the first day, I set off at six in the morning, drove for four hours to Datong, and used the noon and afternoon time to visit the Yungang Grottoes and the Nine-Dragon Wall. In the evening, I went to the ancient city of Datong to eat food, enjoy the night view, and visit the night market. I suggest that friends traveling to Datong book a hotel near the ancient city in advance for convenience in both rest and play. Since I had to drive four hours back, on the second day, I only visited the Hanging Temple and the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda (a reminder: you need to book a ticket in advance to climb the Hanging Temple, otherwise, you can only view it from a distance). Besides these, there are many other essential attractions that I can only explore in-depth on a future visit. Although this trip was rushed, I truly felt the 'great differences in Datong.' When I stood in front of those pagodas, murals, buildings, and sculptures, it was far more shocking than seeing them online. I felt as if I was having a conversation across time and space with the ancients, experiencing the vicissitudes of a thousand years. It felt like every carving, every brick, and every tile carried the bloodline of Chinese civilization, flowing through the river of time to the present. Datong, I will come again!