July 9, 2006
Five and a half hours after leaving Beijing and after a slow climb up and into the mountains, we arrived in Datong, in the north of Shanxi province. As well as the scenery, the people seemed pleasantly different from those we'd met up north. Everyone was more relaxed and many said hello or spoke to us out of curiosity, rather than avarice. Additional interactions are the little-kid-wave, the hello-then-giggle, the Chinese stare, which is more common outside of the bigger cities.
Initially, the staring frustrated me, but quickly I began to appreciate it's reciprocal nature. So, since people routinely pushed their faces to my email, journal or meal, I began to do the same. It's actually immensely helpful; when I see somebody tucked into a nice looking meal, I walk over and stare at their food, sometimes pointing and evaluating it with Leah and then the waiter. Sometimes the diners look at me (with no expression), I look at them (with no expression) and then we both return to looking at their food. A different stare also exists and is used by people who rarely see tourists.
Tourists mainly stop in Datong to see the Yungong caves, as we did. Buddhas (and other Buddhist themes) in countless arrangements are carved out of the rock--actually, the cave is the space around the Buddha. Their sizes range from tiny ones that could be covered with a palm to Tokyo-crushing giants. My favorite Buddha, in cave #5, is seated, brightly painted, towers some 60 feet (from tail bone to coils) and occupies about a third of the cave's volume. For some of the Chinese tourists, though, never mind the 1500 year old ruins in the background, we were far more interesting. A girl told me that her mother has never seen a tourist and wanted to get a picture of her friends with me. Leah also posed for some pictures with a couple of other groups, an experience she found oddly flattering. I just thought it was funny, but perplexing.
-David
