Datong
China's capital under the Northern Wei dynasty—home to 51,000 Buddhist statues carved into the Yungang Grottoes (460–525 AD). Became one of China's most polluted coal cities. Now building solar farms on coalfields while young people leave for Beijing.
Datong was China's capital before Beijing was China's capital—and the reason is coal. The Northern Wei dynasty (386–534 AD) made Datong its capital for nearly a century, and from this base, the Xianbei rulers carved the Yungang Grottoes: 51,000 Buddhist statues in 252 caves, created between 460 and 525 AD, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Liao and Jin dynasties later made Datong a secondary capital. For over a thousand years, Datong's position on the northern frontier—where the agricultural Chinese plains meet the Mongolian steppe—gave it strategic importance that transcended any single dynasty.
But modern Datong runs on coal, not empires. Shanxi province sits atop China's richest coalfields, and Datong became the centre of extraction. The Datong Coal Mining Group was one of China's largest state-owned mining enterprises, and the city's economy was built around extraction, transport, and power generation. Coal dust coated everything. Air quality was among China's worst. The city earned a reputation as one of the most polluted places in China—a coal monoculture that blackened its ancient heritage.
The pivot began in the 2010s. Mayor Geng Yanbo launched an ambitious urban renewal programme, demolishing Soviet-era housing blocks and rebuilding sections of the ancient city wall. The Yungang Grottoes became the anchor of a heritage tourism strategy. Solar energy installations expanded as the national government pushed coal-producing regions to diversify. Datong built one of China's largest solar power demonstration zones—a visible symbol of a coal city trying to reinvent itself.
The transition remains incomplete. Coal still dominates. The manufacturing and service sectors that replaced mining in other Chinese cities have been slower to develop in Datong's remote northern location. The city's population has been declining as young people migrate to Beijing and provincial capitals. Datong is a city caught between the dynasty that carved its most beautiful art and the industry that disfigured it—trying to find an identity in the gap between 51,000 Buddhist statues and 51 million tons of annual coal production.