21st October: Beijing, China to Datong, China
It was time to depart Beijing and therefore the day of our first experience of the incredible Chinese rail network. Since first operation in 2008, China has astonishingly built 46,000 km of high-speed rail! (not to mention that built in other countries). Getting across the city in the tail end of the morning rush was a bit of a challenge, especially given that passengers are told to arrive 1-hour before departure. Luckily, there were no queues for the bag scans, and we actually still had 45 minutes to wait in the station. Beijing Bei (Bei means north, and Beijing means northern capital) is actually on the site of a station from 1905 but was completely rebuilt as the terminus of a high speed line between 2016 and 2019. It’s one of the smaller main stations, consisting of 11 platforms and only basic (by Chinese standards) facilities. We passed the time playing with a cute little boy who decided to keep sneaking up on us, much to his mum’s irritation at him!
Fifteen minutes before departure, our gate was opened. We weren’t able to scan through directly, but the manual gate operator scanned our passports and we were swiftly on to the platform where the train was watiing. Your passport is your ticket here. You put the details in when booking and just scan that. The route out of the city was mainly in tunnels but the majority of the rest of the route was elevated. We passed out of the Beijing metropolitan area and through Hebei, crossing into Shanxi province. It looked chilly outside in the grey light, as polluted industrial valley cities alternated with corn growing agricultural landscapes. We skirted Inner Mongolia and wondered how bitterly cold this area must get in winter. I perversely regret never visiting here during winter in the days when the coal dust was thick enough to turn day to night. Nowadays, that stage of development has thankfully long since passed. The industrial revolution, accelerated to warp speed.
Getting the bus into the city from the high speed station, we hit another transport snag. Our AliPay codes for the Datong region wouldn’t load without a Chinese ID and we foolishly still didn’t have cash on us. Eventually, after a kind student had tried to help, the driver let us travel for free. We’re really grateful for people helping us but felt a bit frazzled by the whole experience. Luckily, our favourite tea brand had a store in the shopping centre below the apartment we’d booked and they had comfy chairs too. That chill time was much needed as getting into the apartment was also a little tricky. Eventually, we got a code via WeChat and were in!
This is where the day turned completely surreal. The room has a stack of drinks to buy, complete with condoms and a sex toy! We’ve no idea what sort of place we’ve booked here but there is also a giant creepy teddy bear in a skirt and various stuffed cats. Additionally, the towels for the shower are made of paper. There’s some kind of intelligent system in the room called ‘Small Degrees Small Degrees’ which can be asked to play VIP films (not sure I want to know!) on the massive projector screen. Apparently one of these things also responds to the name ‘Kiwi Fruit’. Time to go outside!
Datong is very much a metaphor for modern China. It has a long and distinguished history as a former dynastic capital and trading centre with the lands of the steppe just to the north. It is also a coal city in the industrial heartlands which have driven China’s incredible increase in standard of living. There were relatively short-term (compared to the west) environmental and human cost through the ‘dirty phase’ of industrialisation but these days the industry is rapidly cleaning up and diversifying. Now, the historic centre, having long been neglected and crumbled, has had over £5 billion spent on it to rebuild it all from scratch, even including the 7km long and 10-metre-high city walls and a palace which burned down 400 years ago. It’s an incredible undertaking, even if a little bit like a theme park at times. The city is currently home to around 3 million people, which is the size of Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, and Birmingham (England’s second-to-sixth biggest cities) combined but still not in the largest 50 cities in China! We’re at just over 1,000 metres up here and it’s set to be below freezing on each of our 3 nights in town. We’ll soon be entering the period of the year when this part of China pretty much stays below freezing day and night and doesn’t have a drop of rain or snow. That sounds rough to me and I’m glad we’ll be further south.
There was a very popular restaurant, so we joined those inside in waiting for a table. A while later we were shown upstairs to our own fancy room with a server waiting for us. We did our best to pick vegetable dishes and asked to make sure there wasn’t any hidden meat. We thought we’d done OK, but the server told Kaja through translation that ‘cows are handsome’ and winked, so we didn’t really know what we were getting! It turned out to be a delicious vegetable and bean protein dish in sauce with garlic and chillies. As seems to be the way, it was served over a burning flame to keep hot. We had some green veggies with it, two bowls of rice, two jugs of tea, and two big, steamed buns. The bill was £7.
On our way back, via the shopping centre for groceries, the was time for a few more surrealist moments. Looking into one shop, dozens and dozens of cats were staring back at us. Apparently, this was the ‘cat museum’ where you could go and meet cats from all over the world. When leaving the supermarket, someone rode past on a plastic dinosaur. Once outside the shopping centre, a person scooted past with a small dog dressed up like a minion on the handlebars. If you want eccentricity, come to China! Back we went to our room, turning the stuffed cats there to face away from us. In doing so, everything I touched thereafter, including Kaja and the water from the tap, generated a static shock. That’s more than enough bizarreness for one day!
