Datong

Datong's first importance came from the steppe frontier. The Han founded a garrison here in 200 BC at a place already called Pingcheng, and in the following centuries Pingcheng became the capital of the Northern Wei, a dynasty of Tuoba origin that ruled northern China from here through most of the 5th century. Their court adopted Buddhism on a monumental scale, and from about 460 the cliffs at Yungang were carved with colossal Buddhas whose faces mix Chinese, Central Asian and Indian models. In 494 the Wei moved their capital south to Luoyang and the city's first golden age ended.

It rose again under the Khitan Liao and then the Jurchen Jin, who made it a western capital and built the temples that survive: the Huayan and Shanhua monasteries, with timber halls and clay sculpture of the 11th and 12th centuries, are among the most important pre-Ming buildings in China. The Ming made it a fortress town on the northern defence line, enclosing it in a square brick wall and garrisoning it against Mongol raids; the Great Wall runs across the hills not far to the north and west.

In the 20th century Datong became an industrial city. The coalfield beneath it is one of China's largest, and the mines, power stations and a locomotive works built after 1949 brought in workers and gave the city a reputation for smoke and dust. From 2008 a controversial rebuilding programme under the then mayor demolished large areas of old housing and reconstructed the Ming wall and swathes of the old city in grey brick, displacing many residents. With coal in decline, the city has leaned on tourism, gas and solar power since.

Datong's culture is northern and frontier-shaped. For centuries this was where Chinese farming met the steppe, and the mix shows in the Buddhist art of Yungang, in the mutton in its cooking, and in a bluntness of manner that locals recognise in themselves. Shanxi opera, jinju, and the regional variant known as Beilu bangzi are performed on festival days, accompanied by drums, cymbals and the piercing suona horn.

Buddhism remains the city's cultural signature. Yungang made Datong a centre of religious sculpture, and the temples in the old city still hold services; the Hanging Temple to the south-east, where Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian images share the same cliff, is a favourite local emblem of religious coexistence. Paper-cutting, lacquer and copperware are the old crafts, the last associated with the city's hotpot vessels.

The rebuilding of the old city divides opinion. Supporters point to a walled centre that attracts visitors and lifts a city facing the end of coal; critics argue that reconstruction replaced genuine old neighbourhoods with new work in old styles. Either way the result governs daily life: residents walk and exercise on the rampart, hold weddings against the gate towers and gather for lantern displays at the new year. Mining families remain a large part of the population, and the discipline and solidarity of pit work still colour local identity.

About 3.1 million people live in the prefecture-level city, with roughly 1.8 million of them in the built-up area formed by the Pingcheng and Yungang districts, and the population has shifted eastwards as new residential quarters went up across the Yu River. Housing is cheap by national standards, and many households combine work in the city with land or relatives in the villages of the surrounding plain.

Coal dominated the economy for generations through the Datong Coal Mine Group and the power stations it fed, and it is still a major employer, but output has been curbed and the city has pushed into renewable energy, with wind and solar installations on the plateau, along with equipment manufacturing, rail engineering and tourism. Air quality, once notoriously bad, has improved with cleaner heating and stricter controls, though winter smog has not disappeared.

Days begin early and cold for much of the year. Breakfast is noodles, baozi or fried dough sticks from a stall; heating runs from about mid-October to late March; and in the evening the squares inside and outside the wall fill with dancers and children on scooters. Younger residents leave for Taiyuan, Beijing or the coast in significant numbers, and an ageing population, the run-down of the mines and the cost of maintaining a rebuilt old city are the issues that shape local politics.

Datong eats Shanxi food in its northern, heartier register. Daoxiao mian, knife-shaved noodles, are the staple: thick in the middle, thin at the edges and chewy, topped with braised mutton, tomato and egg or a meat sauce, always within reach of the vinegar jug. Other flour dishes crowd the menus — youmian, oat-flour rolls steamed in honeycomb trays, cat's-ear pasta, sliced noodle soups and stuffed pancakes.

Mutton and potatoes run through the cooking, a legacy of the dry uplands. Copper hotpots of mutton, cabbage and vermicelli are winter food, and skewers grilled over charcoal are the standard accompaniment to beer on a summer evening. The local speciality is huanghua, dried daylily buds grown in the dry country around the city, which are soaked and cooked into stews, soups and cold salads and sold in bags as a souvenir. Shanxi's aged grain vinegar is on every table and goes with almost every dish.

Snacks and sweets are plain and filling: shaomai steamed dumplings, deep-fried mahua twists, hardened sesame flatbreads split and filled with meat, and in winter roasted sweet potatoes and candied hawthorn skewers sold from carts near the gate towers. Beer is the everyday drink, and the provincial spirit Fenjiu, distilled far to the south at Xinghuacun, is the bottle brought out for guests.