Day
2
Datong (B, L)
Sightseeing: The Shang Huayan Monastery, The Yungang Grottoes, Datong Nine-Dragon Screen Wall
Today we will first visit the Shang Huayan Monastery. The Huayan Monastery complex is located on Daxi Street on the south western side of Datong City. There are two separate sections to the monastery, the upper one referred to as the Grand Hall housing five large Ming Dynasty Buddhas, and the lower section referred to as the Sutra Temple containing a library of some 18,000 volumes of Buddhist writings. Built during the Liao Dynasty (907 - 1125), the Huayan Monastery is the largest and best preserved monastery of the Liao Dynasty in existence in China. This monastery was built according to the Huayan Sutra Sect of the Huayan School and is unique in that it faces east instead of south.
Then we will head to the Yungang Grottoes. Yungang Grottoes, one of the three major cave clusters in China, punctuate the north cliff of Wuzhou Mountain, Datong. The area was excavated along the mountain, extending 1 km (0.62 miles) from east to west, revealing 53 caves and over 51,000 stone statues.
Finally visit the Datong Nine-Dragon Screen Wall, which is presently the oldest and largest glazed screen in China today. It is three times larger than that in Beihai Park, Beijing City. The screen, It is made up of 426 specially-fired glazed bricks, with a height of 8 meters (about 26 feet), 2.02 meters (6.6 feet) thick and 45.5 meters (149 feet) long. The Screen can be divided into three parts, the pedestal, body and roof.