Night Tour of Datong Ancient City

Night Visit to Datong Ancient City: The Legendary Light and Shadow on the Millennium City Wall As dusk falls over Yanmen Pass, the lights of Datong Ancient City gradually illuminate. Standing by the arrow slits of the Ming city wall and looking down, the entire city resembles a thread-bound book outlined by light strips, with flying eaves and upturned corners like vigorous brush strokes, and the lights of the nine streets and eighteen alleys like flowing gilded text—the Northern Wei capital is telling a 1,500-year legend through light and shadow. 🏮 The "Night Banquet" of the Liao and Jin Ancient City Before you is the "Phoenix City," once the "Western Capital" of the Liao and Jin dynasties. The roof charms of Huayan Temple gleam with gilded light under the spotlights, the dougong brackets of Shanhua Temple cast twelve layered shadows in the moonlight, and the most stunning is the Kuixing Tower on the East City Wall. Its three-tiered Xieshan roof is sculpted by lights like a glazed pagoda, evoking the grand scene of Liao nobles hosting "quyan" (musical banquets) here. Historical records say Emperor Daozong of Liao once illuminated the entire city tower with a luminous pearl, composing poetry with his ministers all night long. The light and shadow show we chase today may well be the echo of that elegant past. 🏯 The "Time Capsule" of General Xu Da’s City Wall Reconstruction Running your fingers over the bricks of the battlements, you can feel the wisdom of Ming Dynasty General Xu Da. These walls, rammed with glutinous rice mortar, contain 23 different sizes of bricks—when rebuilt in 1421, Xu Da cleverly reused old bricks from the Northern Wei and Liao-Jin eras. New bricks inscribed with "Made in Taiyuan Prefecture, 10th Year of Hongwu" stand alongside Liao dynasty grooved bricks, forming a three-dimensional history of city construction. On a night tour, be sure to find the "watchtower" protruding from the southeast corner of the wall. When Mongol cavalry threatened, the defenders used "hanging lanterns as signals" here to transmit military intelligence. 🎑 The "Heartbeat of the Ancient City" Restored by Geng Yanbo Passing through the antique-style archway on West Drum Tower Street, you encounter the most touching "dialogue between past and present." During the ancient city restoration project launched in 2008, workers unexpectedly uncovered the Ming Dynasty drainage system of Datong Prefecture. These 600-year-old ceramic underground pipes still silently work in the dark. The bronze reliefs on the city wall’s horse path recreate the "Twelve Views of Pingcheng" recorded in the Book of Wei using modern techniques. At the corner of the Four Archways, a street lamp shaped like a Northern Wei pottery figurine gazes through glass at genuine Northern Wei tomb artifacts nearby. When the 10 p.m. drum signal sounds from the former site of the Prince Dai’s Mansion, the entire ancient city suddenly switches to black-and-white ink mode. This is the perfect moment to climb Qian Tower and watch the moonlight silver the edges of 72 enemy towers, while the modern lights of distant coal mines scatter like stars—the "capital of three dynasties, key city of two regimes" always keeps the tacit understanding of telling its vicissitudes by day and blooming in splendor by night. Standing here, you suddenly understand: Datong’s night is the gentlest developing solution in the long river of history.