Day 39:

I spent today and yesterday around the city of Yuncheng. I've gone off the map a little bit - this place gets scant few inches of text in my Lonely Planet, and NO street map. I've come to see a pair of temples, so far having made it to one, which was very impressive.

The city here is dirty. Both environmentally and, shall we say, aesthetically. There's lots of industry in the suburbs - big chugging coal plants and the remnants of a salt industry that crapped out in the 1970s. There is no "keep our streets tidy" mentality here (and in much of the Chinese countryside) - litter goes not in waste baskets, but rather on the ground. This is natural and normal. At night, the streets are a sea of plastic hubris and food remains. But while the streets at night are very dirty, they are also quite alive and bustling places. This is good. But the nightlife here is not vibrant like in a bazaar, or youthful like Beijing at night - it's more an expression of common people doing very plain things. Again, this is good.

So, yeah, late last night I tried to tell the non-English speaking hotel staff that I wanted to get to a temple to the north of here. Of course, she couldn't help me, but at about ten that night she sent to my room another hotel guest, who was able to fill me in on the details. The guest was a university professor from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and a fluent speaker of Chinese. He's presently travelling in China with his son, for pleasure and a bit of research. He was also kind enough to let me tag along with him to Yongle temple (my desired destination) for the day.

The Temple proved to be an impressive sight. It's a twelfth century Taoist creation that is best known for it's great murals - large, detailed and continuous (wrapping around three walls) depictions of Taoist figures and of twelfth century Chinese life. Reasonably well preserved, the architecture of the temple is similarly impressive, but it is almost entirely that artwork that draws people to the temple. And making it more compelling for me, my guide filled me in on the history and unanswered questions that surround the site. Curiously, he pointed out that while the Chinese are very good at preservation,m they aren't so skilled at researching what they preserve. They can say "this is very old and beautiful," but can't say much about what a historical sight MEANS.

So, that took up most of my day. I did a bit of planning for the next few weeks (more on that later), and then went back to the hotel. One more temple (and a festival, perhaps) tomorrow, followed by a fast bus to Xi'an.