Datong, China

I arrived in Datong mainly for one reason, to escape from Beijing and his bloody crowd, and I discovered a medium sized city maybe not nice-looking from common standars of beauty, but definitely charming to me. Datong is a coal mining town (`only` one million people!), well far from the economic boom Beijing is experiencing. Here is city of blue collars and you can feel it walking down the streets, it`s exquisite decadent and dirty. The road next to where I live is a trade-fair of cheap restaurants: small awful shacks where the real Chinese life takes place. I haven`t been able to resist from the temptation to get into one of them: has been simply amazing, one of the best bowls of noodle ever.
I went also visiting Yungang caves and Hanging monastery, the first is a mountain with caves and more than 50.000 Buddhas carved inside, while the second is a beautiful monastery settled on the edge of a huge cliff. Both interesting sights, useless saying they were overcrowded as usual.