‘Facing solidified history’ – Pingyao 平遥
11 Sept. 2004
I made a quick escape this week to Pingyao in China, a town in the Shanxi province that has not escaped from the walls built around it over 1200 years ago in the Zhou dynasty (827 B.C. – 782 B.C.). I was in China collecting my things from Beijing and wanted to see a few of the sights that I had missed out on: the hanging temple at Datong and the ancient walled city of Pingyao. Along the way I reflected on some of the opportunities that I am considering, and started to read a book on emotional intelligence.
Shanxi (山西 – west of mountains) province lies to the south west of Beijing and is a mountainous area with a population of 28 million mainly engaged in mining and, since 2001, a growing tourism industry that seeks to capitalize on the Ming dynasty history. Train N205 pulled out of Beijing West station at 23:29 and without announcement, the lights in the carriage were turned out within 5 minutes of leaving the station; leaving me to fumble in the dark and rue not bringing a torch. At 07.00 we pulled into Datong (大同), a mining town of nearly 3 million that offers the familiar welcome of an expanse of dusty tarmac, grimy street vendors, and solicitous cab drivers. The state owned tourist office was located just inside the station, and I booked a trip to the Xuankong Si (悬空寺Hanging Monastery) and Yungang Shiku (云岗石窟Cloud Ridge Caves) for RMB100, and booked a ticket to leave Datong that night.
A minibus took some 20 of us to the two main attractions of Datong. I had met a Swiss couple on the train before the lights went out the night before, Mark and Xena, and they were like most of my traveling companions; taking a year off work in their late twenties before heading home to settle down. Along with a gaggle of English Oxford Univ. graduates, we toured the caves that contain some 50,000 Buddhist statues. The statues in the Cloud Ridge Caves were carved in the sandstone caves over a 64 year period by some 40,000 craftsmen from AD460 onwards. Having grown up under the shadows of Canterbury Cathedral and with a Christian centric culture, I was impacted by the scale, care and history of the carvings. The 15m high Buddha’s is supposedly the largest of its kind in the world.
While studying in Beijing I had really wanted to see the Xuankong Si – the hanging temple. This was another hour’s ride up into the foothill mountains some 65km away from Datong. Apparently the last monk left the 1400-year-old temple in 1996 at the age of 82, unable to navigate the narrow walkways that connect a series of rooms perched on stilts 20 meters above the Jinlong canyon. The river is dammed now, so I could only imagine what the sound and serenity the old monk must have lived with, and reluctantly relinquished. Now hordes of tourists, mainly Chinese, clambered up the steps and peered into the caves housing Buddha sculptures. What people have done in faith – the carvings and the hanging temple really made me aware of the continuity of humanities desire for enlightenment and dedication to places that celebrate that enlightenment.
Datong is not one of the places where much enlightenment can be found, and so I took the night train to Pingyao, arriving at 05.00 to see a completely starlit walled city of one and two story hutong’s, just as it would have looked for the last 1200 years, without cars, street lights or tv aerials. Since earning a Unesco heritage site award in 1997 Pingyao has been at the forefront of the tourism industry. Tourism earned Shanxi province RMB188m from 18.8m tourists in 2004[1] and officially employs 2000 people, and at the Minfeng Binguan the boss was busily renovating the 20 room courtyard he had recently purchased. Once the French SAGA tour group had left the Binguan I put my head down in room 002, appreciating how quiet the old courtyard buildings are with their thick walls and separation from the growing chaos on the main street.
After a nap, I rented a bike and along with an Austrian couple cycled the 7km to Shuanglin Si – yet another Ming dynasty temple. The danger is that temples compete with one another for my attention, and I found the run down Shuanglin notable for the fabulous clay sculptures being made by students from the Xian school of fine art. I asked the students why they were not sculpting their own Xian terracotta warriors, and it seemed that the depictions of Buddha’s in various stages of enlightenment and the frightening scenes of hell made for more interesting artwork. More enlightening for me was cycling out of the temple and through an archway in a 7 metre high mud wall – through which was an clutch of houses that used mud for all surfaces, including the roof, walls and flooring. A young mule stood with a mare tethered with fraying rope to a mud wall – this is part of Pingyao the Shanxi tourism office probably didn’t want us to see.
The tourism office of Pingyao has become rather smart, and now visitors have to pay one ticket for RMB120 (US$15) to gain access to some 20 museums and to walk the 7kms of the city wall. I went to visit the Rishengchang Financial House which at one stage had 57 branches around China before collapsing in 1916 – but this and the next museum had only the odd room name in English and arcanely organized curios that meant even deduction was practically impossible and so I went back to the hotel. Dinner was fun with the Swiss couple and an Irish couple. I used my Chinese to order vegetarian food. The Chinese like to add meat to vegetable dishes without actually saying anything in the menu about it. Having been up since 05.00 I was ready for an early night.
The highlight of the trip was my early morning walk around the abandoned walls the following morning. ‘Facing solidified history, please care of it’ read the plaque on the watch-tower – and I was feeling particularly humbled until I noticed that the bricks underfoot had 1979 imprinted on them; presumably part of an unpublicized attempt to restore the wall for the visit of Premier Zhu Ronggi in 2001. I heard a squawking sound from the other side of the wall and saw a funeral party sitting on the curbside, facing large piles of rubbish and opposite a middle school. At 10.00 music started to play, reminiscent of the music at BLCU, and sure enough the kids came out to play; the sound of the playground music competing with the wake. Looking down at the hutongs, those away from the tourist streets, I noticed how so many looked unfinished and unsafe, even though hundreds of years old; it’s as if the inhabitants live with a perpetual sense of impermanence compounded by a poverty that becomes self perpetuating. Perhaps I noticed it as I have been living an impermanent life for the last 9 months – never quite sure I will be staying month to month.
I became burnt out on temples and museums with signage that made no sense, and decided to have a relaxed afternoon, getting ready for the return journey to Beijing. I created a Business Idea Qualifier (BIQ) – a 10-point evaluation technique for all the new ideas that keep filling my head. I resolved to run my new ideas through this filter. I also started reading a book on Emotional Intelligence[2] that includes the interesting concept that the ‘cognitive unconscious’ processes information at a primordial level with the implication that we are aware of things before we come to know them. This gave rise to some interesting possibilities for the communications training. I read some more of the book on the train back to Beijing, pleased to have taken time to visit and practice my mandarin, but also getting excited about returning to Singapore and to move into my new home, el Centro. Being impermanent has been tiring and I feel it is time to get stuck into some work; to try to create some solidified history even.
[1] Source: Shanxi Today – Issue 8, 2004
