Day 90 (4 September): Buddhist Caves

In Datong today we saw the Yunang Grottos which are essentially caves with thousands of sandstone Buddhas carved into the walls ranging in size from 17 m to 2 cm. After seeing that we saw sights in Datong city (the Huayan Buddhist Monastery and the Nine Dragons Wall) before catching another overnight train to Bejing which is my last stop before returning to the US on 7 September.

Observations:
1) Motorized bicycles. A large number of the bicycles in China now have small motors on them that allow them to function as part bicycle, part moped. This is yet another sign that people here even outside the costal cities are moving up the economic ladder.
2) Pollution. Its pretty bad in Datong as this is also one of the largest coal mining cities in China. Our guide said there are 13 coal-based power plants located here including the ones that power Bejing. Nonetheless, the government had the forsight to reroute one of the major coal roads so the pollution wouldn't damage the Buddhas in the Yungang Grottos too much more.
3) The infrastructure in Datong is behind that everywhere else we've been so far and the city looks much more like what I would have expected in communist Russia than today's China. Nonetheless, there are function markets everywhere.

Day 89 (3 September): Shopping Shanxi

This morning we drove back to Taiyuan from Pingyao where we would spend the day exploring the city before heading on an overnight train to Datong which is further north in Shanxi province near the Mongolian border.

The highlight of the day for my grandmother was finally finding a Chinese woman older than her as thus far on the trip she's flagged down about every old looking Chinese woman and tried to extract their age from them.

Observations:
1) Bricks. On the way back to Taiyuan we drove by a large brick making factory. This certainly comes in useful for all of the building being done in China and the sheer number of bricks being used.
2) Hardware and tool shops downtown. In Taiyuan's Main Square located halfway between its largest (central) park and its railway station most of the retailers sold construction, building, and trades realted products. It hard to imagine a state capital in the US　where in its main shopping district these are the products being sold.
3) Brand infringement. This seems to be on the decline. I haven't seen very many knock-offs of international brands on the streets when that is what I saw mostly when I was in China three years ago. Instead it seems that China has gotten more creative and started creating its own domestic brands to look like foreign ones by giving them Italian sounding names or the like.
4) Quality and prices. The same clothing items (a pair of jeans for example) of roughly the same looking quality seem to be priced at very different levels for reasons that I can't understand. You would see a pair of jeans in one place for 2 USD and then an almost identical pair (still without a brand-name recognizable to me) for over 120 USD. Its pretty incedible that such price differences can exist within one city block of each other.
5) The cost of bicycles. There are some decent, but low-quality bicycles sold here for 22 USD when even in Walmart, Target or the like in the US, I don't think you could find a bike for less than 70 USD. That shows how much it must be marked up in the US because even at 22 USD someone must be making a profit.