2 Days Datong Tour of Cultural Heritage

Tour Overview

Want a cultural tour? Datong is one of the first batch of 24 national historical and cultural cities in China and one of the nine ancient capitals of China. Explore the highlight cultural heritage in and nearby Datong city on the 2 days private tour. With company of your private tour guide, you will visit: Yungang Grottoes, Nine Dragon Screen, Datong Museum, Hanging Monastery, Cave House Village, Yingxian Wooden Pagoda. Take this tour to probe into Datong’s long history and Buddhist culture.

Day-by-day Itinerary

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Day 1: Datong
Yungang Grottoes, Nine Dragon Screen, Datong Museum (Lunch)

AM: At 09:00 our guide and driver will meet you at your hotel lobby. Then you will board the car and go toward Yungang Grottoes, one of the 4 greatest Buddhist grottoes in China (The other threes are: Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang, Maiji Grottoes in Tianshui). The Grottoes locates at foot of the Wuzhou Mountain which is 16km from Datong downtown area. The earliest grottoes there were excavated in the 5^th century. And nowadays there are 51 caves and 5100+ Buddha figures left. From the Buddha figures visitors will learn about the facts about local history, art, music, dance, and architecture in ancient time.

Noon: Lunch in local restaurant.

PM: After the Chinese style lunch in a local restaurant, we will drive back to downtown area to visit Nine Dragon Screen. This 600 year-old screen wall was built in the early Ming Dynasty by the 13^th son of the Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang in front of his mansion. The screen is 8 meters tall, and 45.5 meters long. And the nine dragons on the screen wall win the screen’s name. Beside the dragon figures, the plants and animals figures are also the highlights of the screen. At last you will pay a visit to Datong Museum to get a glimpse of the city’s past and the cultural relics unearthed there.

Accommodation: Hotel booked by you

Yungang Grottoes
Day 2: Datong
Hanging Monastery, Cave House Village, Yingxian Wooden Pagoda (Lunch)

AM: After hotel pickup in the morning you will firstly be escorted to visit Hanging Monastery. The monastery was built on cliff which is 75 meters above the ground and till today it has a history of 1400+ years. The ingenious structure of the temple and its position in Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are the main attraction points of it. On the way you will stop over at a local village to see the Cave Houses, the unique folk dwelling style of Shanxi Province.

Hanging Temple

Noon: Lunch in local restaurant.

PM: After lunch we will drive toward Wooden Pagoda in Yingxian County. The pagoda was built in 1056, since it is a pure wooden structure people usually call it Wooden Pagoda. In 2016, the pagoda was acknowledged as the world’s tallest wooden pagoda by Guinness World Record.

Yingxian Wooden Pagoda