(Some of you wanted to see more photos of Cloud Ridge Caves, so I uploaded about 60 pics at http://asia.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dahenson2/my_photos.  They're taken directly off of my digital camera, unedited, so some of the files might be fairly large.  Feel free to print any you like, but if you post them elsewhere on the 'net, please credit this blog.  If you make any money from them (unlikely), I'll expect you to give half of the proceeds to one of my favourite charities.)

Datong to Pingyao

Exhausted after the day at the caves, so I sleep late, check out around noon.  Train doesn't leave until 2:30, and the station is right across the street, so no rush.  Find some of those wonderful steamed buns called baozi -- you can usually find them from breakfast thru lunchtime, sort of a poor man's dim sum.  Much tastier - and cheaper - than the ones I had near the station.  An hour at a 'net cafe, and it's time to catch the train.

I'm headed to Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, where I'll have to spend the night before heading to Pingyao the next morning.  Trip is about 6 hours long and costs only 4 bucks -- so I'm worried what it will look like.  It arrives 20 minutes late and looks pretty worn, but it's not filled to capacity so I get a bench to myself - comfortable enough.

We head directly south, through the valley the Mongols would have passed through centuries before, and mountain ranges are visible to both the east and west of us (Shanxi means 'western mountains' - only about 30% of the province is flat).  Most of the hills near the tracks seemed to be composed of loess, that chalky yellow soil so susceptible to wind erosion that great clouds of the stuff often diminish visibility in cities as far away as Tokyo and Seoul.  It doesn't help that virtually every square inch of every hill is farmed - terraced fields have been carved out of the landscape, hundreds if not thousands of years old.  A few trees here and there cling to patches of ground too vertical for cultivation. 

Decidedly ugly are the industrial villages we pass through every half hour or so.  These consist of gigantic smoke-belching factories, so huge they take up every square foot of available flatland.  Miserable-looking 6-story tenements creep up the hills around the factories, their broad backs covered in soot.  Mountains of coal, ten times a man's height, fill the common areas - everything in sight is some shade of black or grey, including the black clouds hanging overhead, connected by hundreds of sooty chimneys to the houses below.  Depressing. 

Night begins to fall, and a huge, rusty-coloured full moon rises in the east, making the villages we pass look like something out of a Tim Burton film.  Finally, city lights appear - Taiyuan.  I find a hotel near the station since I want to get to Pingyao early tomorrow, so I don't get to see much of the city.  But it looks much more cosmopolitan than Datong - several new-looking hotels to choose from, and McDonald's golden arches glowing in the distance - a welcome sight after days and days of Chinese food.

This McDonald's shares a phenomenon I've experienced a number of times in China -- and for the life of me I can't figure out what's going on.  On more than one occasion - different restaurants/shops, different cities - Kenny G's 'Forever in Love' plays on an endless loop!  Not a Kenny G album, or a series of Muzak-like songs -- but one bloody song, looped over and over and over.

I've often heard that fast-food restaurants in the States choose music that subliminally encourage people to eat and move on, not linger.  Perhaps they're on to something with this Kenny G tune.