Travel China | The Hanging Monastery and Buddha Caves in Datong

Travel China | The Hanging Monastery and Buddha Caves in Datong

Datong wasn’t on my agenda until a traveler I met in Mongolia told me about the Buddha cave located nearby. At first, I wanted to take a train directly to Datong from Erlian/Erenhot, the Chinese border town with Mongolia but couldn’t find any train nor bus leaving on the same day, thus I went to Beijing instead. Datong itself was a small city with nothing interesting to see. The city was under construction.

Most sections near the train and bus stations were ugly and dusty, no wonder no-one wanted to stay here overnight. But I was lucky as my hostel Q?ngnián guesthouse located on the old Huayan street, next to the monastery, saved me trip walking around as this was the only beautiful street in Datong. When I walked around the city the next morning to find the bus station and something to eat, I found myself stepping on mud and wet unpaved roads resulted from last night’s rain. Most came here to see Yungang Buddha Cave and the Hanging Monastery although neither were located in Datong.

The Hanging Monastery (Xuankongsi)

1500 years ago during the Northern Wei period, a monk built a temple into a mountain cliff . One of the reason was to protect it from the frequent ran. Located near Hengshan, one of China’s Five Sacred Mountains, this famous monastery is known not only for its precarious dangling position, but for its inclusion of China’s three main religions: Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist.

The Buddha Caves (Yungang Shiku)

The real reason tourists flock to to Datong is Yungang Grottoes, housing more than 50000 rock-carved Buddha statues of various sizes, some of which were as tall as 18 meters. The first construction started during the Northern Wei who chose Buddhism as their state religion.

Tips for independent travelers

Should you visit the Hanging Monastery and the Buddha Caves?

I highly recommend the Buddha caves. It’s very unique. There are thousands of small and medium sized Buddhas carved onto rocks and giant Buddhas carved from rocks.

If you don’t have time, you can skip the Hanging Monastery. I like it because I have never seen a hanging temple before, but I don’t think it’s worth the money (>= 70 CNY for transportation + 150/75 CNY admission) and time (>= 3 hours) to see just one temple. If you have your own car, you should also drive up the mountain and see other sights (not sure if they are also included in the ticket. Every temple here in China charges admission fee.). The monastery is located near mount Hengshan, one of China’s Greatest Five Mountains. Some claimed it was the most beautiful among the five.

Can you visit both and not stay in Datong?
Theoretically you can visit both in one day without staying in Datong, but you need to arrive in Datong very early in the morning and leave late in the evening. My train from Beijing arrived at 5:30 in the morning. I left my luggage at the train station and hopped on a bus in front of the station. Travel guides probably tell you to go to some station and get bus X and pay Y, but in China everything is written in Chinese, so you won’t find it quickly, just ask someone and show them the Chinese names. The bus will drop you somewhere in Huyuan and a free taxi will take you to the entrance. The trip took about 1.30 hours. In the summer, the monastery opens at 8:00 (as of September 24th, 2012). I finished at 9:15 and took a taxi back to Huyuan. (There was no public transportation.) The taxi dropped me at a bus station which at the time there was no bus leaving to Datong. I waited for one hour, and some people who worked there gave me a lift to another bus station where there was bus going to Datong. The bus left at 11:30 and I arrived at 13:00 at some bus station.

I followed the instruction from the Lonely planet guidebook saying that bus 3-2 going to Yungang Grottoes from the train station. From where I got off the bus, I asked some local people for direction to the train station. They took me to some street and told me to take bus no. 4. After more than half an hour wait, I got on bus no. 4 to the train station. But nobody seemed to know about bus 3-2. I asked a local woman who told me to take 15 and switch to 26. But it seemed a bit strange so I asked one policeman who told me to take no. 4 to the last stop and changed to 3. I took his advice because I didn’t remember seeing 15 nor 26. Now bus no. 4 took me back almost to where I came from. It was easy to find bus no. 3 which drove directly to the caves. It was about 14:00 so I knew I couldn’t make it back on time to change the date of my train to Xian to today instead of tomorrow. (Train to Xian departed at 16:40.) If you have later train for example to Pingyao at 11:00, you can totally do it.