One Day Datong Trip from Beijing by bullet train

Our experienced and professional Datong guide would meet you at Datong South Railway Station, drive to the city center to have lunch firstly. Because you would leave your hotel in Beijing at around 7 – 7:20am, you would have limit time for breakfast or even no time for breakfast, so we would like to arrange an early lunch for you, or you can call it late breakfast. Knife-cut noodles in Datong is one of the most beloved examples of street food in China. We can arrange it for you if you wanna try. Then we would drive you to visit Yungang Grottoes which is one of four large grottoes in China. Then drive you to visit Huayan Temple with murals and many statues inside and lots of them have over 900 years history. The most famous statue is a female sculpture which casted in Liao Dynasty (907-1125) and people normally evaluated her as the Orient Venus. After seeing the two famous cultural relics in Datong, we would drive you to the railway station and arrive there at around 18:30pm. You can order the Chinese lunch box which selling by handcart on the train which cost around RMB30-60 per one.

The background knowledge of our recommended sites:

The 4 famous large grottoes in China are: Yungang Grottoes in Datong (Shanxi Province), Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang (Gansu Province), Longmen Grottoes (Luoyang, Henan Province) and Maijishan Grottoes in Tianshui (Gansu Province).

Huayan Temple is the largest and most perfectly preserved temple of the Liao (916-1125) and Jin (1115-1234) dynasties in China.

Price Quote：

If you are 2 persons traveling: US$239/per person

Remark: China Adventure Specialist provides private car with English speaking guide in Datong, but only driver service in Beijing for delivering and pick up, lunch at local Chinese restaurant in Datong, entrance fee for the specified attractions (Yungang Grottoes & Huayan Temple),  round way second class seat tickets of bullet train between Beijing and Datong, life insurance but no tipping to guide and drivers (The driver in Datong and Beijing), and the accommodation in Beijing is on your own book.

Suggest Tipping Standard:

US$30 to local guide

US$15 to local driver in Datong, US$10 to local driver in Beijing (for 2 times)

Friendly Words from our experiences:

If you have above 4 full days time in Beijing, go to Datong for one day is a good option. As Datong was the capital city of Beiwei Dynasty (386 —534) so there are lots of the heritages left there with much longer history than the cultural relics in Beijing. 7 hours is short, but still enough to visit the two famous sites in Datong, Yungang Grottoes is UNESCO Cultural Heritage, and Huayan Temple is also a very good place to appreciate Chinese architecture and arts, also explore more about Chinese culture.