www.chinawanderer.com Tel:+86 010-67033318 ------4 Days Tour Route Summary As the second largest city in Province, Datong is situated in the far north, near the border with Inner Mongolia. Yun Gang Caves (Cloud Ridge Caves) was listed UNESCO World Heritage in 2001. Wooden , Suspending , Price:1 Person:$850 2-5 Persons:$730 6-9 Persons:$620 Destination: Duration: 4 Days Tour Type: Private Tour Day 1 Evening train to Da Tong. Overnight on the train. Meals: Accommodation: Day 2 In early morning, arrive in Datong. Visit Wooden Pagoda in Ying County, Suspending Temple on Mt. Hengshan, overnight Da Tong Hotel.

Wooden Pagoda The county should allay Jiada the Fogong Temple in Shanxi Province in the northwest county should Temple, commonly known as Yingxian Wooden Tower. Built in Liao - Ning 2002 (Year 1056), Jinmengchang six years (Year 1195) Upgrading completed. is the most ancient existing maximum configuration of a wooden tower construction, and only a wooden structure pavilion-style tower, as the nation''s key units to be protected. The Hanging Temple, also Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; : Xuánkng Sì) is a temple built into a cliff (75 m or 246 ft above the ground) near in Hunyuan County, Datong City, Shanxi province, China. The closest city is Datong, 64.23 kilometers to the northwest. Along with the , the Hanging Temple is one of the main tourist attractions and historical sites in the Datong area. Built more than 1,500 years ago, this temple is notable not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also because it is the only existing temple with the combination of three Chinese traditional religions: , , and . The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiseled into the cliffs. The main supportive structure is hidden inside the bedrock.[1] The monastery is located in the small canyon basin, and the body of the building hangs from the middle of the cliff under the prominent summit, protecting the temple from rain erosion and sunlight. Coupled with the repair of the dynasties, the color tattoo in the temple is relatively well preserved. On December 2010, it was listed in the “Time” magazine as the world''s top ten most odd dangerous buildings.

Meals: Accommodation: Day 3 Visit the Yun Gang Caves, Nine-dragon Screen, Monastery, and Shan Hua Monastery. Back to on night train.

Yun Gang Caves Yungang Grottoes, an Example combining the with Western One in 5th Century A.D. As one of the three leading grottoes in China, Yungang Grottoes are located in the south of Wuzhoum mountain north bank of Ten-Mile River. It is about sixteen kilometers to the west of Datong, Shanxi Province. All the Caves, extending about one kilometer from east to west, were hollowed out of the mountain. The 254 Caves are made up of three groups of east, middle and west with 45 major grottos and 209 secondary caves. The carving area ammouns to more than 18000 square meters. There are 1100 niches and 51000 statues with the biggest statue of 17 meters and the smallest statue of 2 centimeters. It''s a historic monument combing the Chinese culture with Western one as it is a Buddhist art treasure house of royal style, which a nationality has spent nearly a dynasty completing for the first time ever since the Buddhist art was spread to China. It was promulgated one of the first group of key cultural relics preservation units by the State Council in March 1961. Yungang Grottoes were inscribed into the World Cultural Heritage List by the UNESCO In December 2001 and became first group of 5A levet Chinese Tourist Areas in May 2007.

Yungang Grottoes were formerly called the grotto temple of Wuzhou mountain and renamed Yunggang Grottoes in . As Li Daoyuan, the famous geographer in the Dynasty, once described in the “Commentary on Waterways classic”, “It was excavated into the mountain because of the rock structure. It is rare and unusual in the world because of its grandness and magnificence. With halls in the mountain and palaces on the water, smoke and look at each other. From the distance, the great woods and beautiful landscape await you.”

As the big- scale grotto temple relics built in the Northern Wei Dynasty, It took seventy years to complete the project starting under the reign of Emperor Wencheg who rivived Buddism, and ending in Zhengguang Era. Rich in content and magnificent in sculpture, the Grottoes was a large Buddhist temple constructed by the skillful craftsmen by groups and generations with best technology and funding from the royal family of the Northern Wei Dynasty. As the older group grottes built in the east of Xinjiang, Yungang Grottoes are different from other older grottoes for its magnificent royal family style. The Buddhist culture and art shown in the Grottoes invloves in history, architecture and music etc. Yungang Grottoes has played an important role in artisitc and World due to the highest Buddhist art level it represented as an example combining the Chinese and Western cultures and masterpeice of oriental sculpture art. It is one of the top three grottoes with Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang and Longmen Grottes in . Yungang Grottoes, along with Ajanta Caves of Indian and Bamyan Caves of Afghanistan, are the three stone carving treasure houses of fine arts in the world.

The Buddhist art reflected in the Yungang Caves is divided into early, middle and late periods in the perspective of cave shape, statue pattern evolution.

Nine-dragon Screen he Datong Nine Dragon Screen, built over 600 years ago, 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, built for the thirteenth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), has been well preserved and remains intact to this day. 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.

Huayan Monastery Originally built in (907-1125), during which time the Huayan school of Buddhism was in vogue, the was so named after the (Huayan Sutra in Chinese), one of the seven largest schools of Buddhism. Being an imposing and magnificent monastery, Huayan Monastery is one of the most important temples of Liao and Jin (1115-1234) dynasties, which was once an imperial ancestral temple enshrined the stone statues and bronze statues of emperors.

Meals: Accommodation: Day 4 Arrive in Beijing in early morning. Meals: Accommodation: