Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Xi'an City Wall Park
Last weekend I spent four hours walking right round the park that goes all along the outside of the City Wall. With the sky being more blue than grey for a change, I took my camera along with me...
Company outing
Last weekend was the annual company outing. In a surprising show of democracy, we were given the choice of three destinations, with the unanimous winner being a trip to Hanzhong, a small city of a million or so inhabitants that's in this province but south of the Qinling mountain range.
The morning coach trip started reasonably enough before the tour guide cranked into life. Tour guides tend to be attractive young women, but we were presented with a short fat man who was nevertheless equally annoying. Being the tallest person on the bus, and also the whitest, meant my decision to bring my MP3 was a correct one. He started playing a game where everyone had to say an adjective, then go round again and this time everyone had to say ‘My bum is…’ in front of their chosen adjective. I had my headphones on and pretended not to hear, saving myself a lot of unnecessary hassle, nomination for song singing and so on.
The Qinling mountains run across the lower half of Shaanxi Province and form a natural and formidable barrier between northern and southern China. They're the source of countless Chinese folk stories and home to an abundance of wildlife, most notably pandas. Newly built tunnels bore straight through the mountains, occasionally bursting out into sunlight to reveal the green-covered peaks before diving straight back inside.
Eventually we made it to Hanzhong. The city itself was as faceless and ordinary looking as most mid- to small-size Chinese cities. Lunch was taken in a restaurant where the food was served within one minute of our arrival, and after 15 minutes we were already being herded out. There was a wedding party going on, with large amounts of baijiu being consumed, and it looked rather more fun than our dry tables.
For the afternoon outing we went to the countryside to Wuhou Ci, or Temple of Marquis, a place commemorating the life of Zhuge Liang. Zhuge Liang was the Chancellor of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period 2,000 years ago, and remains a popular figure today on account of his all-round genius and wisdom. Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, one of the four great works of ancient Chinese literature, was written 1,000 years after his death and extols his exploits. As well as having contributed many of the genius ploys to the 36 Strategems, he is also credited with inventing military weapons, landmines and steamed buns.
There are actually lots of different Wuhou Ci around China, but the one here is the earliest, first built in 263AD, and continually repaired and modernised since. I found it much more pleasant and agreeable than many of the major tourist attractions in bigger cities, which are so often overrun with tourists. It was laid out in the usual way, a rectangular area laid out symmetrically around a centre line.
Inside the entrance was a small construction built to look like a city gate with a zither (ancient Chinese musical stringed instrument) inside. It commemorates the Empty City Strategem - Kong Cheng Ji 空城计 - supposedly used by Zhuge Liang. He was left stranded in a nearly deserted city with the enemy’s strong army rapidly approaching. He decided to open up the gates to the City and sit up on the Main Gate and calmly play the zither. When the enemy Sima Yi approached with his Wei army, he was suspicious and retreated, fearful of an ambush. It's now a common saying in modern Chinese meaning to use a false show of strength to cover up a weakness.
Inside was a series of neat and tidy buildings with red lacquer walls, with trees and rocks dotted in between. While the rest of our 40-strong group followed the incomprehensible guide around, I wandered off and found a secluded pond with a small pavilion in the middle with goldfish and pink lilies basking in the sun. It was here that Zhuge Liang was said to sit peacefully and mull over his tactics away from the frenzy of the battlefield – and perhaps tourists, too.
At the back of the site was a red wooden building perched high up on the wall with fantastic views over the verdant farmland and river beyond. Most people didn’t actually get to see it because they were too busy taking photographs of themselves. The sheer volume of photos taken was astonishing, with any opportunity for a photo being grasped. 'Pose' is now a word incorporated into Chinese and familiar to any young person, and ‘posing’ was the hippest thing going on. The favourite one is the classic victory V sign. There’s also the ‘pouty face with big eyes’, and leaning in front of someone else with arms outstretched. The favourite ‘pose’ of anyone older is to stand there with less expression than a Terracotta Warrior.
Later in the afternoon we went to a picturesque lake formed behind a dam. Before the dam was built in 1970, the area was the site of the remains of the earliest ancient boardwalks in China. To get from the ancient capital of Xi'an to the southern cities of Chengdu and beyond, crossing over the Qinling Mountains was the only way through, and a series of wooden boardwalks were built onto the edges of the mountains to make it possible. It took 1,900 years to complete. All that remains are a few photos in a museum.
It was a reasonably pretty area, with the lush mountain peaks rising straight out of the man-made lake, and a modern boardwalk hugging the edge, making it possible to walk a long way around in among the trees and above the water in places. Unfortunately, there was a tacky gift shop selling a cross between a recorder and an accordion, and two of the parents from our company caved in and bought one for their kids.
Evening dinner was identical to lunch, only in a different place because everyone apart from me had complained that the lunch was disgusting. It shows more my unrefined palate than my affable nature. After dinner, we were free to wander round the City. In the central square I stood with a group of old residents in battered old clothes expressionlessly watching a promotional event. There was a guy on a BMX on a stage jumping over a very frightened girl with dyed frizzy hair. The music blasting out from the speakers was that Chinese classic, Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’.
The second day started with a huge breakfast in the same restaurant from 12 hours previously and a short bus ride through the rain to South Lake, an extremely pretty lake dotted with small islands. It probably would have been even prettier had it not been completely shrouded in mist. The light drizzle and my lack of umbrella prompted everyone in turn to ask me how I managed without one.
Looking at the map and listening to the tour guide, it was clear we were only going to go to two of the most popular islands, a tiny fraction of the whole lake. A five-minute boat trip dropped us off at the far end of one. There was a small zoo with some bored and unimpressed looking animals hiding in the corners of their concrete boxes, and a place with monkeys where people were throwing in sweets with the wrappers left on. I wandered on up through the bamboo and over the bridge to the second island, home of the ‘Catching the Moonlight Tower’, a tall pagoda and hive of tourist activity. On seeing all the bumper cars, fairground games and general tourist pap, I wondered down to the lake edge and walked around the outside of the island, hidden among the wet green trees and away from the noise. There was a rusty old rowboat tied up with a fraying rope, and I was very tempted to hop in and propel myself into the mist to an isolated spot to enjoy the serenity that the Emperors came here for hundreds and thousands of years ago.
After about an hour or so I wandered around to the front of the pagoda, where it turned out the rest of the group were having a massive group photo on the steps leading up to the pagoda. I stayed down by the lake and watched the fish darting around under water. On the boat back, there was a frenzy of photo-taking as our brief trip away from Xi’an drew to a close.
Lunch might have been a ‘tour group meal’ we had in the same restaurant again, but it was extremely good (and free), so I stocked up. On the bus back, my friend and I amused ourselves by taking pictures of people nodding off in amusing positions. A couple of people noticed, and so were then unable (or unwilling) to get back to sleep for fear of being caught on camera. Infantile behavior rarely loses its comedy value.
This trip showed me again that China is huge and has a great number of places worth visiting away from the cities. It’s just a question of finding them and getting away from the computers, traffic jams and bad air that constitute a large part of daily urban life.
The morning coach trip started reasonably enough before the tour guide cranked into life. Tour guides tend to be attractive young women, but we were presented with a short fat man who was nevertheless equally annoying. Being the tallest person on the bus, and also the whitest, meant my decision to bring my MP3 was a correct one. He started playing a game where everyone had to say an adjective, then go round again and this time everyone had to say ‘My bum is…’ in front of their chosen adjective. I had my headphones on and pretended not to hear, saving myself a lot of unnecessary hassle, nomination for song singing and so on.
The Qinling mountains run across the lower half of Shaanxi Province and form a natural and formidable barrier between northern and southern China. They're the source of countless Chinese folk stories and home to an abundance of wildlife, most notably pandas. Newly built tunnels bore straight through the mountains, occasionally bursting out into sunlight to reveal the green-covered peaks before diving straight back inside.
Eventually we made it to Hanzhong. The city itself was as faceless and ordinary looking as most mid- to small-size Chinese cities. Lunch was taken in a restaurant where the food was served within one minute of our arrival, and after 15 minutes we were already being herded out. There was a wedding party going on, with large amounts of baijiu being consumed, and it looked rather more fun than our dry tables.
For the afternoon outing we went to the countryside to Wuhou Ci, or Temple of Marquis, a place commemorating the life of Zhuge Liang. Zhuge Liang was the Chancellor of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period 2,000 years ago, and remains a popular figure today on account of his all-round genius and wisdom. Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, one of the four great works of ancient Chinese literature, was written 1,000 years after his death and extols his exploits. As well as having contributed many of the genius ploys to the 36 Strategems, he is also credited with inventing military weapons, landmines and steamed buns.
There are actually lots of different Wuhou Ci around China, but the one here is the earliest, first built in 263AD, and continually repaired and modernised since. I found it much more pleasant and agreeable than many of the major tourist attractions in bigger cities, which are so often overrun with tourists. It was laid out in the usual way, a rectangular area laid out symmetrically around a centre line.
Inside the entrance was a small construction built to look like a city gate with a zither (ancient Chinese musical stringed instrument) inside. It commemorates the Empty City Strategem - Kong Cheng Ji 空城计 - supposedly used by Zhuge Liang. He was left stranded in a nearly deserted city with the enemy’s strong army rapidly approaching. He decided to open up the gates to the City and sit up on the Main Gate and calmly play the zither. When the enemy Sima Yi approached with his Wei army, he was suspicious and retreated, fearful of an ambush. It's now a common saying in modern Chinese meaning to use a false show of strength to cover up a weakness.
Inside was a series of neat and tidy buildings with red lacquer walls, with trees and rocks dotted in between. While the rest of our 40-strong group followed the incomprehensible guide around, I wandered off and found a secluded pond with a small pavilion in the middle with goldfish and pink lilies basking in the sun. It was here that Zhuge Liang was said to sit peacefully and mull over his tactics away from the frenzy of the battlefield – and perhaps tourists, too.
At the back of the site was a red wooden building perched high up on the wall with fantastic views over the verdant farmland and river beyond. Most people didn’t actually get to see it because they were too busy taking photographs of themselves. The sheer volume of photos taken was astonishing, with any opportunity for a photo being grasped. 'Pose' is now a word incorporated into Chinese and familiar to any young person, and ‘posing’ was the hippest thing going on. The favourite one is the classic victory V sign. There’s also the ‘pouty face with big eyes’, and leaning in front of someone else with arms outstretched. The favourite ‘pose’ of anyone older is to stand there with less expression than a Terracotta Warrior.
Later in the afternoon we went to a picturesque lake formed behind a dam. Before the dam was built in 1970, the area was the site of the remains of the earliest ancient boardwalks in China. To get from the ancient capital of Xi'an to the southern cities of Chengdu and beyond, crossing over the Qinling Mountains was the only way through, and a series of wooden boardwalks were built onto the edges of the mountains to make it possible. It took 1,900 years to complete. All that remains are a few photos in a museum.
It was a reasonably pretty area, with the lush mountain peaks rising straight out of the man-made lake, and a modern boardwalk hugging the edge, making it possible to walk a long way around in among the trees and above the water in places. Unfortunately, there was a tacky gift shop selling a cross between a recorder and an accordion, and two of the parents from our company caved in and bought one for their kids.
Evening dinner was identical to lunch, only in a different place because everyone apart from me had complained that the lunch was disgusting. It shows more my unrefined palate than my affable nature. After dinner, we were free to wander round the City. In the central square I stood with a group of old residents in battered old clothes expressionlessly watching a promotional event. There was a guy on a BMX on a stage jumping over a very frightened girl with dyed frizzy hair. The music blasting out from the speakers was that Chinese classic, Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’.
The second day started with a huge breakfast in the same restaurant from 12 hours previously and a short bus ride through the rain to South Lake, an extremely pretty lake dotted with small islands. It probably would have been even prettier had it not been completely shrouded in mist. The light drizzle and my lack of umbrella prompted everyone in turn to ask me how I managed without one.
Looking at the map and listening to the tour guide, it was clear we were only going to go to two of the most popular islands, a tiny fraction of the whole lake. A five-minute boat trip dropped us off at the far end of one. There was a small zoo with some bored and unimpressed looking animals hiding in the corners of their concrete boxes, and a place with monkeys where people were throwing in sweets with the wrappers left on. I wandered on up through the bamboo and over the bridge to the second island, home of the ‘Catching the Moonlight Tower’, a tall pagoda and hive of tourist activity. On seeing all the bumper cars, fairground games and general tourist pap, I wondered down to the lake edge and walked around the outside of the island, hidden among the wet green trees and away from the noise. There was a rusty old rowboat tied up with a fraying rope, and I was very tempted to hop in and propel myself into the mist to an isolated spot to enjoy the serenity that the Emperors came here for hundreds and thousands of years ago.
After about an hour or so I wandered around to the front of the pagoda, where it turned out the rest of the group were having a massive group photo on the steps leading up to the pagoda. I stayed down by the lake and watched the fish darting around under water. On the boat back, there was a frenzy of photo-taking as our brief trip away from Xi’an drew to a close.
Lunch might have been a ‘tour group meal’ we had in the same restaurant again, but it was extremely good (and free), so I stocked up. On the bus back, my friend and I amused ourselves by taking pictures of people nodding off in amusing positions. A couple of people noticed, and so were then unable (or unwilling) to get back to sleep for fear of being caught on camera. Infantile behavior rarely loses its comedy value.
This trip showed me again that China is huge and has a great number of places worth visiting away from the cities. It’s just a question of finding them and getting away from the computers, traffic jams and bad air that constitute a large part of daily urban life.
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