Outside the city walls of Xi'an, next to the Shaanxi History Museum, is the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. This building was originally built in 652 with five stories to house treasures gathered by the traveler Xuanzang. Fifty years later the whole thing, made of rammed earth, collapsed. By then, empress Wu Zetian had the pagoda rebuilt making it five stories taller. It remained like that for 800 years until a powerful earthquake knocked down three floors leaving it the way it is now. Let's do the math: 5+5-3=7. Or you can just count from the photo.
Forest of Stone Steles Museum
The Forest of Stone Steles Museum, or the Beilin Museum, is more or less an ancient Chinese library. You see, even though the Chinese did invent the mixing together of fibers of cellulose (aka paper), it's not quite the safest way for keeping information. So for something super important, like a set of rules or poems written by the greatest minds of their time, you want something more fire and water proof. Learning (not really) from the ancient rules of the Japanese じゃんけんぽん, the stone was elected.
The steles found here are divided in seven rooms, each one containing scripture from different dynasties of China. The first room, for example, has a group of tablets with 12 reading books inscribed. Another reason, beside preservation, was to prevent errors in copy. Because some Chinese characters are complicated and one little stroke makes a difference, it would not be unusual to see mistakes in handwritten copies.
Landmarks of Xi'an, the Drum and Bell Towers
The Bell Tower 钟楼
The Bell Tower is possibly the most popular achitectural icon of the city of Xi'an. It was built in 1394 during the Ming dynasty and now sits in the center of a roundabout where two important avenues cross. In the old days people would just pass through the tunnel on their way in and out of town. As most renovated buildings in China, much has changed since its construction and what we see now is very different from the previous centuries.
As many places in China, the Bell tower also has it's own little legend.
In Ming Dynasty, several earthquakes struck Guanzhong area, thousands were dead and injured. Then a legend appeared: There was a great river flowing across the center of Xi'an City. A dragon in the river was always active and caused trouble, so an earthquake occurred. An official of Xi'an government believed these words, so he ordered the blacksmiths of the whole city to make a several thousand feet of long iron chain in order to lock the dragon and sink it to river. He then ordered 5,000 craftsmen to repair the Bell Tower day and night in order to use the tower to restrain the dragon. He believed this would suppress the dragon firmly under the river and so it would no longer be active and cause trouble again. After establishing the Bell Tower, earthquakes never occurred in Xi'an again.
- China Travel Tour Guide
The Drum Tower 鼓楼
The Drum Tower was built in 1380, so that's 14 years before the Bell Tower, for those of you who were calculating already. Inside this building you can find the biggest drum in the world, or so says the sign right next to it, stamped by the Guinness Book of World Records. Unfortunately while I was in Xi'an I wasn't lucky enough to catch one of the daily performances. They have a pretty nice museum on the third floor. Both the Drum and Bell towers of Xi'an are a lot larger than the ones in Beijing, most likely because of Xi'an's capital status for so long.
Burning "money" during Spring Festival, the Chinese New Year
新年快乐!Happy new year! A lunar new year has started and now it is officially the year of the monkey. The Lunar New Years is also known as Spring Festival, because according to their tradition, now spring begins.
As I said in my last post, I spent the holiday in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. On New Year's Eve absolutely everything closed! I expected stores to be closed, I expected restaurants to be closed. It was even ok that museums were closed. But even public parks were closed! Xi'an is one of the top 4 tourist destinations in China and they should think about the tourists. Not only us foreigners were looking for places to go, but many Chinese travelers would show up at the museum, for example, to find it's doors locked. And then, for no reason at all, a mall was open, with absolutely no one in there except the unfortunate people working.
Because everything was closed, it was a resting day. At night, we decided to walk inside the old city walls and check out the local celebrations. Lots of firecrackers, fireworks and people burning stuff for the dead.
A Muslim Quarter in the ancient capital of China, Xi'an
Last week was the Lunar New Year, so I had a whole week off work and took some time to go to Xi'an 西安, in Shaanxi 陕西 province. Xi'an was the capital of the Chinese Empire for 11 dynasties, so it is a historically important place.
One of the city's most well known places is the famous Muslim Quarter. Xi'an was the first city in China to be introduced to Islam in the year 651, during the Tang Dynasty. Most Muslims in this area belong to the Hui ethnic minority. Today the city has around 50 thousand followers of this religion.
Pagoda of the Old Man Wansong 万松老人塔
A hidden treasure only 100 meters from the Xisi subway center in central Beijing is the Pagoda of the Old Man Wansong, or if you want to translate literally, the man of 10 thousand pine trees. The pagoda was named after Wansong Xingxiu, a very famous monk that lived from 1166 to 1246. For those of you calculating, he was 80 when he died.
This construction was made as a tomb for the man, and has been in this same place since he died, making it 770-years-old in 2016.
By the late Ming dynasty the pagoda was already hidden amongst the streets and buildings of the flourishing commercial city of Beijing, and it was not until 1606 that a monk called Le'an (樂庵) noticed the overgrown pagoda, and raised money to repair it. - Wikipedia
Well, in the years since 1606, just like unkept grass in a field, the city has grown back and the pagoda is lost in between the buildings and shops.
The building has undergone several restorations and in 1753 a brick pagoda was built around the original. During maintenance in 1986 workers discovered the original pagoda was still inside, hidden behind the bricks, waiting to be seen.
Five Pagoda Temple 五塔寺
In my latest weekend escapade, I visited the Dazhenjue Temple, meaning the Temple of Great Righteous Awakening, or just Wutasi, the Five Pagoda Temple, as the building became known in modern Beijing.
The Indian-style construction makes this temple one of only six of its kind in China. Legend says that a high-ranking Indian monk brought the plans of the building to China during the reign of emperor Yong Le, but the construction was only completed around 60 years later in 1473, under emperor Chenghua.
Twice this temple was looted and all surrounding constructions burnt to the ground. First, during the Second Opium War, in 1860, by the French and British soldiers, and then during the Boxer Rebellion, in 1900, by the Eight-Nation Alliance, formed by the Russian, Japanese, British (with Australia and India fighting under the British flag), French, American, German, Italian and Austria-Hungarian armies. The only original building that still stands is the temple itself with the five pagodas, made of white marble.
A cold day at the Xiang Shui Hu Great Wall
This last Saturday was apparently the coldest day in Beijing in the last 30 years. According to my phone, the temperature outside was -24°C and felt like -35°C. So I thought it would be interesting to go out to the Great Wall of China, about two hours away from town, and take some pictures. I was hoping it would be whiter than it was.
I went to the Xiang Shui Hu 响水湖 section of the Great Wall, which means "river that sounds of flowing water", probably because there is a river near by, as you can see in the first photo.
It was so cold that the steam from my breath would immediately freeze on the back of my camera. I pulled my phone out and it almost immediately shut off.
A couple of years ago I visited the exact same spot at sunset in the spring. The atmosphere was completely different. Here are a few shots from that day so you can compare.
Tianning Temple 天宁寺: a thousand-year-old treasure
Hidden in the Xicheng district of Beijing, right beside a huge factory chimney, is the ancient Tianning Temple. This structure was built in 1100, during the Liao Dynasty, making it 920 years old at the time of these photos, one of the oldest in town. The pagoda is solid and unlike many others of its kind it does not have stairs to take you to the top. After surviving centuries, many similar pagodas were torn down in the 20th century, like the older Qingshou Temple twin towers that were destroyed in 1954 so Chang An avenue could be expanded.
The octagonal pagoda, 57.8 meters tall, was erected on a square platform. The bottom of the pagoda is in the form of a huge Sumeru pedestal, decorated with carved arch patterns. At the corners there are relief sculptures of heavenly guardians accompanied by another level of carved arches. A veranda with banisters and brackets was built around the upper part of the pedestal.
Originally, in this same location there used to be another temple, built during the Sui Dynasty (589 - 618), and was considered at the time one of the most important of China. Legend says that he built 30 temples, one for each province of China, to keep relics of the Buddha. Some believe they still lie beneath the Tianning Temple to this day.
Skating on a chair: a cold afternoon in Beijing
On this cold Saturday afternoon I decided to go for a walk in the historical Gulou (Drum Tower) and Houhai (Rear sea/lake) area of Beijing and take some pictures of daily life.
Before going to the frozen Houhai lake, I decided to make a stop at the Drum and Bell towers, used to keep the official time of the empire from 1272 all the way to 1924. I had been there several times before, but I just don't get tired of this site. In the future I will dedicate a post just to these two great sites.