Yungang Grottoes and Hanging Temple One-day Tour from Beijing

5:30 AM: Beijing hotel pickup. 

6:40 am: Bullet train from Beijing North Station to Datong. 

11:00 am: Arrive in Datong South Station. Pickup by your English-speaking guide and driver. Drive to Yungang Grottoes. Start the tour here for two hours.

The caverns are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture and one of the three most famous ancient sculptural sites of China. They were mainly constructed in the period between 460-525 AD during the Northern Wei Dynasty. They are an outstanding example of Chinese stone carvings from the 5th and 6th centuries. Altogether, the site is composed of 252 grottoes with more than 51,000 Buddha statues and statuettes. In 2001, the Yungang Grottoes were announced as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Yungang Grottoes is considered by UNESCO as a "masterpiece of early Chinese Buddhist cave art... [and] ...represent the successful fusion of Buddhist religious symbolic art from south and central Asia with Chinese cultural traditions, starting in the 5th century CE under Imperial auspices."

1:00 pm: Gourmet Chinese northern style dishes and noodles. :)

2:00 pm - Drive to Hanging Temple. 

2:45 pm: Tour Hengshan Hanging Temple (Xuankong si) 

The Hanging Temple, also Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple is a temple built into a cliff. Along with the Yungang Grottoes, the Hanging Temple is one of the main tourist attractions and historical sites in the Datong area. Built more than 1,500 years ago, this temple is notable not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also because it is the only existing temple with the combination of three Chinese traditional religions: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiseled into the cliffs. The main supportive structure is hidden inside the bedrock.[1] The monastery is located in the small canyon basin, and the body of the building hangs from the middle of the cliff under the prominent summit, protecting the temple from rain erosion and sunlight. Coupled with the repair of the dynasties, the color tattoo in the temple is relatively well preserved.

4:00 pm: Drive to Datong South Station. 

4:45 pm: A brief dinner. 

6:07: Bullet train leaves Datong. 

8:25 pm: Beijing South Station pickup and transfer to your hotel.