A friend requested that I restart my Shit City Guides – I agreed and the two of thus ended up traveling in China in order to be able write this, the Datong Guide to Travel.
Table of Contents
Shit Cities by The Street Food Guy
This came about because years ago I would go to shit Chinese cities, such as Yongzhou, Liuzhou, or Chongzuo for example and share with the world how shit they were. It was fun, it was gritty and it was brutal at the times.
Now with the help Justin Martel of Pioneer Media fame the plan is to reboot it via Instagram, TikTok and even the domain ShitCities.com. Why? Because I like doing dumb shit pretty much and well it is about time that G became a star again.
What the Datong and why did I pick it?
Datong is a city that feels like it is constantly trying to reinvent itself without quite knowing who it wants to be. Back in the glory days it was one of the most polluted cities on the planet. Think choking coal smoke, blackened buildings and the kind of concrete landscape only true believers in communism could love. It was the kind of place where people wore Mao suits unironically and the local flavour came with a generous helping of coal dust.
Then someone had the bright idea to turn it into a Ming Dynasty theme park. The bulldozers came in, the bricks went up, and suddenly the city walls were back. What was once unapologetically communist was now a confused tribute to ancient China. It is weird, awkward and kind of brilliant. One minute you are surrounded by fake dynastic splendour, the next you are in a Shit City complete with all of those empty buildings China wished did not exist.
Datong Old Town, the joke that almost worked
Datong Ancient Town is not ancient. Let’s get that out of the way early. What you’re looking at is essentially a brick-for-brick cosplay of Xi’an, complete with restored city walls, looming gates, temples, palaces and endless rows of “ancient” houses that were all built sometime in the last decade. This isn’t restoration — it’s construction with Chinese characteristics. They didn’t just rebuild the old town, they built a whole new one and declared it historic. The crazy part? It sort of works.
Yes, half the buildings are empty. Yes, there’s an unmistakable ghost city vibe. But come the weekend and it fills with Chinese tourists dressed in rented Hanfu, wandering through this Ming-flavoured fever dream taking selfies and living out their imperial fantasies.
It’s fake, of course. But it’s fake in the same way Hollywood is fake. You know it’s not real, but there’s still something charming about it. The irony here is peak China, because they’ve gone and ripped off their own heritage, repackaged it and sold it back to themselves, which is equal parts sad and genius. Datong Ancient Town is Disneyland with incense, and somehow it kind of gets away with it.
Oh and the street food is not bad
Urbex and Empty Buildings
Datong is the kind of place that makes you wonder if the apocalypse already happened and nobody told you. You walk past rows of empty towers that were clearly meant to house thousands but instead echo like a bad dream. Not abandoned exactly, just never occupied. It’s futuristic in a way that feels completely stuck in the past. Buildings shine under the sun but inside it’s all dust, peeling paint and the faint smell of concrete despair.
And yet somehow, it works. The communist chic lives on. You’ll find old red slogans on factory walls and cafés that look like they were decorated by someone who won a prize in 1978 and never let it go. There’s even a coal museum if you’re into that kind of thing. Yes it is depressing. But it’s also oddly comforting. It’s a terrible city by all the usual metrics, but that’s what makes it great. It’s the perfect kind of ugly.
This means that you can easily do a full day of Urbex and Red Tourism within the confines of the city.
How to stay in Datong Guide
Staying in Datong is all part of the adventure. There’s a Hampton by Hilton for the boring, and a few newer spots trying to play the boutique game, but if you’re coming all this way you may as well lean into it. That’s why the Datong Hotel (大同宾馆) is the only real direction to take.
This hulking monument to Maoist-era travel still stands proudly in the centre of town. The place oozes communist chic with its wide corridors, oversized lobbies, and a strange but endearing sense of faded glory. It feels like a time capsule from the 1980s, and that’s a compliment. You’ll be staying in what was once the best hotel in the city, and in many ways still is.
Datong Hotel
Address: 38 Yingbin Street (迎宾街38号), Pingcheng District (平城区), Datong, Shanxi Province
Phone: +86 352 512 555
Getting In and Out of Datong Guide
Getting in and out of Datong isn’t exactly a thrill ride, but it gets the job done. High-speed trains from Beijing zip you into Datong South Station (大同南站) in under three hours if you time it right. There are also slower trains to the old Datong Station (大同站) if you’re into that kind of retro punishment. From Taiyuan (太原), it’s a quick 90-minute glide, while Xi’an (西安) is a longer slog unless you splurge on the fast train.
The airport exists, barely, with a few daily flights to places like Shanghai or Guangzhou. Honestly, stick to the trains. Once you’re in town, grab a cab or Didi (滴滴出行), because the buses are as outdated as the city planning and its cheap as chips! Welcome to Datong, now go forth and explore Shit City!
Datong Guide Conclusion
So should you visit Datong? Honestly it was a surprise. Not a great one, but a surprise nonetheless. I went in expecting industrial hellfire and found something a little softer around the edges. Not good enough to be good, but not quite bad enough to be brilliant either. It sits right in that weird middle ground of bad.
That said I actually enjoyed it. There is something strangely relaxing about wandering through fake ancient streets while the wind whistles past ghost buildings. We stayed in a former communist party hotel, ate decent street food, drank local draft beer from a reindeer themed shop and barely broke the bank doing so.
Would I come again? Maybe not. But should you visit once? If you like faded communist chic, fake Ming walls, decent beer and awkward Chinese tourism, then this could be your weird China fix. You have read the Datong Guide. Now the choice is yours.