Calvin’s Hub

On the eve of our arrival, we traveled to Datong City in Shanxi Province which is a 6-hour overnight train ride from Beijing. Our plan was to tour during the day and head back to Beijing in the evening.

Datong City

Datong is a city in the province of Shanxi located a few hundred kilometers west of Beijing. It’s primarily a coal mining place and you will notice the smoggy air when touring the city. It’s one of China’s most polluted city.

It is not a small city by any chance with its huge streets,fast food chains and nice malls (although we only saw one mall hehehe).

Anyway, the allure of Datong is its proximity to two of the most breathtaking historical sites in China, the Hanging Monastery and the Yungang Grottoes.

GETTING THERE:
Ask a Chinese friend to help you buy train tickets to Datong. Depending on your ticket, you can board on Beijing West Railway Station (take a cab from Line 1’s Military Museum Subway Station) or Beijing Railway Station (Line 2). [Beijing Subway Map]

You can also refer to this guide by my sister on how to check train schedule and tips when buying tickets.

Since you would probably take the overnight train, just take a cab to the train station. Some subway stations close at around 11PM.

Hellish Train Ride

If there’s a lowlight on our trip to Datong, it’s the train ride. The waiting area of the train station is filled with all kinds of people going to the province. It smells heavily of cigarette smoke and you can see people sitting on the floor having their meals or drinking. Not really tourist-attractive.

We purchased the economy ticket called “Hard Sleeper” (113 RMB) which means we don’t have our own room. Each partition has 6 bunks (triple-deck bunks on each side)!! Tough luck for the person who will be sleeping on the top-most bunk and have to take pee breaks.

Anyway, even inside you can still smell the scent of cigarette especially if you’re near the door and we can’t open the windows because it was too cold outside. Even though there are no smoking signs, the locals doesn’t seem to care.

The shared squat toilet smells awful as well and I doubt if the sink has clean water.

Let’s just say that I would rather ride our ferries in economy class with the shared bunks.

Bring wet tissues if you’re going on this train ride and try to relieve yourself before going to the station so you don’t have to use the onboard toilet. I also won’t fault you if you bring an air freshener.

We arrived at Datong City Railway Station at around 6:45 AM and purchased our train ticket back to Beijing before heading out to hire a ride to take us to our destinations. If it’s cold in Beijing, it was colder in Datong. I think it was –8 Celsius when we arrived early in the morning.

If you didn’t bring any food, you can ask your driver to drop by fast food establishments like McDonalds or KFC for some food to go.

Before you scratch this destination on your list, you might want to check out how cool the Hanging Monastery and Yungang Grottoes are.

TOTAL COSTS:
Train ticket to Datong – 113RMB
Car rental with driver – 240RMB (might differ during peak season but 400RMB is max)
Train ticket back to Beijing – 96RMB

Part 5: Datong – Hanging Monastery

You might also be interested in:

• Touring Beijing in Winter Part 6: Datong – Yungang Grottoes
• Touring Beijing in Winter Part 5: Datong – Hanging Monastery
• Touring Beijing in Winter Part 1: The Plan
• Touring Beijing in Winter Part 3: The Olympic Green

Filed under: Travel