h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, as is so often the case, life carries on, unabated, for me. Just this last week I had my midterm, which was a basically pleasant experience. As usual, the midterm was followed by an extended weekend of travel, from which I have only just returned. Here's what happened...

Rather late Thursday night, we arrived at the quite imposing Beijing West Train Station, which has been done in the rather odd but very popular architectural style that combines shiny ultra-modern with traditional chinese style. The two don't actually meld, but rather are juxtaposed, so you get a gleaming skyrise with a red, Qing style building on top.
We rode a sleeper car from Beijing to Datong, which is in Shanxi province, about a 7 hour ride away. The ride was an interesting experience. On the one hand, I think there's something quite romantic about traveling through the heartland of China by train, with the sepia colored dreamscape flitting past my sleeping head. On the other hand, my berth was both narrow and short, making it a lot like sleeping on a bookshelf, (which, if you haven't ever done that, I recomend you find a bookshelf right away.) I was also disconcerted by the fact that the train attendant tucked me in. I was lying there, minding my own business, with my duck feet dangling off the end of my bookshelf when suddenly the attendant just tucked in the bedding all around them. It was very unnerving, especially for someone half asleep.
The following morning, we emerged stiff and groggy at the Datong train station. Datong is, to quote our guide, "a pretty small city, with about 2 million people." Evidently, back in the good old days, it was the capital of the Northern Wei dynasty for several years, back in about 500 AD, give or a take a century or two. Unfortunately, It doesn't have much to show for it now. It's gray, polluted and terribly dingy. It has many of the same problems as Beijing, but seems to be lacking in Beijing charm. I was particularly disheartened by the way I was perceived by many, which was as a walking pocketbook.
Saturday morning we went to climb around on one of the local mountains, which was beautiful and exhausting. A fairly standard beautiful Chinese mountain in most respects, it was covered in greenery and blanketed in mist. Also, midway down it started raining, which made the whole thing rather more interesting, not to say harrowing. So far, everytime we've gone on an excursion with ACC (Great Wall, Little Three Gorges, Datong) it's involved mountains. The consensus is that they're trying to kil us off, resulting in fewer tests to grade. Seems reasonable.
Next was the famous Datong Hanging Monastery, which clings precariously to a cliff face. It's all very lovely, of course, but the highlite for me was a sign sternly warning impetuous travelers not to "Surmount the Railing." I was also impressed by the handicap bathrooms with a notice advising "This way for maimed people."
I'm going to gloss the other sites right now because I'm feeling tired--suffice it to say,there was a nine story watchtower, a nine dragon screen and an enormously large Buddha grinning at me.
On our last night, the professor threw a bit of a bash for us in the hotel, with crazed disco dancing and karaoke galore. It must have seemd terribly impressive, because by the end we had a small audience, including several maids, three cooks with tall white hats and a handfull of stunned children.
The train ride back was like the first one, only in reverse. I wasn't tucked in by anyone, though.