Johannes Leistner

imagine your city council would decide to rebuild the old part of your town and they would kindly ask you to move to the suburbs as your house was in the way of the new/old city wall – what would you think?

For Datong’s residents this became reality. Datong is reconstructing their ancient city centre as it was (more or less) during the Ming Dynasty. This $8.5 billion project will turn Datong into a Disneyland-style city with 40.000 residents moving away from the centre.

I wouldn’t believe such a story if I haven’t seen it with my own eyes. If you only think about the reconstruction of the city wall (see picture) this is already a massive project. The wall is 5 kilometres long, around 12 metres wide and 10 metres high (at least). Every few 100-metres is featured with a watch tower and not to forget the huge moat, surrounding the wall…

here you can see a part of Datong which happens to be inside the recently built city wall – yes you heard it right: they rebuild their ancient city wall in its old dimensions (more photos to follow tomorrow). part of this gigantic project is to break down all (!) buildings of younger age in the city centre and rebuild them the old style. all residents will have to move to areas like this one: Datong housing project

When we reached “the coal capital” Datong (population of approximately 1.41 million), our first impression was that this gonna be a depressing vacation. The smell from thousands of coal fires was every where and within the city centre the dead eyes of many empty houses were watching us. The late winter season with snow remains and frost added another grey layer of hopelessness… In comparison to the flourishing Beijing everything was dirty, noisy and ugly.

Follow my stream during the next days to find out if this impression remained or if it changed

my first train ride in China (from Beijing to Datong) was great fun! only tickets for the cheapest of four classes (which is called “hard seater”) were available, but at least we had seat reservations because the train got really stuffed as you can see here. together with an over 70 years old couple form the States, we were the only foreigners on board. but after the first of seven hours we got to know our neighbours well – even though only one spoke a few words English.

besides experiencing the atmosphere on a typical Chines train ride, it was very interesting to watch the landscape from the window: power plant after power plant, highways, factories, other railway tracks with coal trains on it, construction sides and so on… From this very first trip outside of Beijing I got a good picture of what the Chines economy is capable of! amazing!

At the Summer Palace, one emperor decided to have a copy built of Suzhou’s canals attached with little shops – already back then they were masters in copying things…

In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace “a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value.”

These are the last photos of my China trip, which has been my last major holiday for this year. It is time to look back, as a year of extensive traveling draws to a close. I have never before been to more places within one year.
This is my hit list of visited cities for 2007:

- Beijing
- Berlin
- Copenhagen
- HongKong
- Las Vegas
- London
- Los Angeles
- Milan
- Paris
- San Francisco
- Zurich

I have also visited so many different flickr members on my travels and made new friends. Thanks for your company and friendship:

- Mike from Orange, CA – I met him in Berlin, oh man we had fun!
- With my dear friend Betty, I spent time in London, LA and Vegas – so great!
- Christoph my brother; together we explored California and Copenhagen
- Jeremy, we met in Milan and enjoyed a tour through the city
- Enjoying a relaxed day on the Channel Islands, CA, together with Ekki, Christoph and my friend Gabi
- Patrick, a nice guy from San Francisco, he showed me around
- Barry I met in London, he really knows a lot about the history of this beautiful city
- Mariarosa I met in Pavia, Italy, a nice town near Milan
- Together with Patrick and Marco, I explored Paris
- And Patrick joined me and Miguel on a trip to Berlin
- All the way from Ammersfoooort, NL: Annelot and Johanna!
- And of course many more people and friends I spent time with in Hamburg

So these are the last photos from China – but of course more trips will follow! I can tell, I already have ideas for 2008 )
I plan to visit Singapore, Sumatra, Bali, New York, Long Island, Stockholm, Prague and maybe also Canada – so stay tuned! Hope you will be “with me” again and will follow my photos and stories…