XI'AN, CHINA
Today I took the bus to a couple of places outside the walled city: The Big Wild Goose Pagoda and the Shaanxi Province History Museum.
The 64-meter-high pagoda dates to 652 AD, although it's been renovated and added to since then. I'm not sure where the "wild goose" comes in, but the "big" part is to differentiate it from the LITTLE Wild Goose Pagoda just down the street (no, really!). It was originally built to house Buddhist scriptures brought back from India by a traveling monk--now it has a few relics inside, but is mainly just a big tower to climb up and look over the city. It sits in the middle of a well-manicured complex of gardens and a small art museum, and outside that there's a huge pedestrian plaza with sculptures and a "dancing fountain" show, which is actually pretty well done. As it was already misty and drizzling, though, the fountains didn't stand out as much as they might have on a clear day, or at night.
From there I walked to the Shaanxi History Museum, which although not quite as impressive as the Shanghai Museum is still quite a large repository for priceless ancient relics, most of which were found in the area. The place is huge, and walking through its galleries, which are arranged chronologically, proved to be quite a workout. One of the more interesting exhibits was a display of hundreds of brass mirrors, many of which are thousands of years old, and recovered from burial sites. It's the backs of the mirrors, of course, that are interesting, as they're carved with every imaginable type of design--animals, flowers, people, abstract shapes, Chinese characters, and every conceivable combination of the above.
On the way back to town, I decided to hop off the bus at the South Gate and scale the city walls, which you can walk or bike around the top of. Some sections are missing, so you can't completely circumnavigate the city, but you can go a fur piece if you want to. Today it was really grey and misty, which meant that hardly anyone was up there, and the weather gave everything a slightly mysterious atmosphere, which was kind of cool.
Today I took the bus to a couple of places outside the walled city: The Big Wild Goose Pagoda and the Shaanxi Province History Museum.
The 64-meter-high pagoda dates to 652 AD, although it's been renovated and added to since then. I'm not sure where the "wild goose" comes in, but the "big" part is to differentiate it from the LITTLE Wild Goose Pagoda just down the street (no, really!). It was originally built to house Buddhist scriptures brought back from India by a traveling monk--now it has a few relics inside, but is mainly just a big tower to climb up and look over the city. It sits in the middle of a well-manicured complex of gardens and a small art museum, and outside that there's a huge pedestrian plaza with sculptures and a "dancing fountain" show, which is actually pretty well done. As it was already misty and drizzling, though, the fountains didn't stand out as much as they might have on a clear day, or at night.
From there I walked to the Shaanxi History Museum, which although not quite as impressive as the Shanghai Museum is still quite a large repository for priceless ancient relics, most of which were found in the area. The place is huge, and walking through its galleries, which are arranged chronologically, proved to be quite a workout. One of the more interesting exhibits was a display of hundreds of brass mirrors, many of which are thousands of years old, and recovered from burial sites. It's the backs of the mirrors, of course, that are interesting, as they're carved with every imaginable type of design--animals, flowers, people, abstract shapes, Chinese characters, and every conceivable combination of the above.
On the way back to town, I decided to hop off the bus at the South Gate and scale the city walls, which you can walk or bike around the top of. Some sections are missing, so you can't completely circumnavigate the city, but you can go a fur piece if you want to. Today it was really grey and misty, which meant that hardly anyone was up there, and the weather gave everything a slightly mysterious atmosphere, which was kind of cool.
posted by John Kuge at 8:32 PM
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