Hello From Datong

I have finally arrived to Datong, China in the Shanxi Province (pronounced Shawn-shee).

Currently I am writing from the eighth floor of the Hongqi Hotel which is no less than a few hundred feet from the railroad station where I arrived late yesterday afternoon on a rail journey that lasted about seven hours from Beijing.

We were supposed to leave at 7:40am from Beijing, but were forced to head to a local shopping centre with our translator and camera guy to find an audio XLR cable that was, well, not packed in the bag. Luckily we found one in the mall which had more electronic stores -- actually booths, than any place I had ever been to. It was pretty much like 80 different Radio Shacks, Best Buys and other stores all packed under one roof.

Beijing was gritty and large, sprawling and defined by large swaths of concrete road which had about three hundred feet of roadway from one side of the street to the other. As for pedestrian and car rules here? There aren't any!

When the light turns green and pedestrians can get the "right of way" to walk, hundreds of cars; a crush of busses, vans, and tiny taxis bursts their way into your path and you become a virtrual game of frogger, wallking three feet stopping as a bus barely brushes past you and then moving forward again careful to constantly move your head left and right to avoid another car!

I didnt have long to spend there, after we bought the supplies for our camera equipment, we headed to the train station and journeyed outside of Beijing. Right now I am currently in Datong, China which is one of the three largest coal-producing regions in all of China. The area here is actually more sunny than the hazy-pollution (a mix of haze and dust from far-away dust storms and the constant presence of construction in the city) that clings to Beijing. The sun is a tiny little orb of light that barely peeks through the clouds there and reminds me more of what Tikrit feels like. But here in Datong, that sort of has gone away.

The city is here quite large but it does not see a lot of foreigners such as myself, being that it is so far off the beaten path. The biggest tourist point here is famous grottoes, where hundreds of caves and carved walls are remanants of 1500 years of Buddhist. This morning my camera crew will head 10 miles west of Datong to the Yungang Grottoes, where more than 51,000 statues of varying sizes have been discovered and somewhat left to their original condition.

Last night we ate a meal at a traditional noodle house which was small and packed. Smoke drifted to the ceiling and the people were friendly. We became sort of an exciting aside to the diners and more so to the cooks. We sat right next to a partition that housed part of the kitchen and three young cooks with tall french pastry hats smiled and were absorbed in our presence. They playfully constructed flowers for me by carving the skins off of turnips and securing them tightly with tooth picks. Behind the cooks was a giant cooking press and a table to press floor into tiny pancakes which created tasty looking pancakes.

I ordered noodle soup and a tasty plate of garlic cloves grilled together with a variety of mushrooms. It tasted smokey and very delicious.

We also went to a local hair salon, where our translator, Michael got a haircut -- one of the best tricks to getting a feel for the local culture and what is happening in a given place. The pictures of him are at the tiny salon. While he got his hair cut, we watched China Television, some live music concert in a warmer climate was being played.

Next stop last night we went to a cramped bar near downtown and had a Corona while we took in the local scene and planned our steps for this morning.

There is certainly more that I have forgotten, but at the very least, I can attach pictures of my journey so far and hope that I will encounter internet access again soon.

Love,

Taylor