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China Ramblings 5

It’s Thursday morning and I only have a few minutes to write before we begin our tour of Xi’an. We have a very vivacious and vociferous young lady as our guide whose English name is Winnie. But before I record our experiences here I need to finish out our tour of Beijing.

Wednesday morning our main event was a tour of the “Temple of Heaven.” This is a site some distance south of the “Forbidden City” where the emperors would come three times a year, the summer solstice to assure rains, the winter solstice to give thanks for the harvest and the spring equinox at the time of seed planting, to worship and offer sacrifices to god to assure a bountiful harvest. (The emperor was considered to be the son of the god.) As we entered the grounds we found hundreds of elderly people engaged in games, dancing, special exercise routines, making music and many other activities. We learned that they can retire at 56 years of age. The main building here was being renovated so we didn’t get to see it but many other features of the extensive grounds we visited. Perhaps the most interesting was the high altar, a circular structure in the center of a walled in rectangle. The rectangle represents earth, the circle heaven. The circular structure consists of three terraces each reached by climbing 9 steps. Each terrace is paved with 9 concentric rings of stones and bordered by a marble railing at its outer edge. A special round stone is in the center of the top terrace and it is surrounded by nine concentric rings of paving stones. The first ring has nine stones in it and the outer most 81. When you stand on the center stone you have special access to god. By now you should have guessed that 9 is an important number. It is the highest single digit odd number and represents the best of the best. The odd numbers are associated with males and the even with females. On the each of the eaves of the emperor’s highest throne room in the Forbidden City are 9 mystical animals. Lesser buildings have fewer animals and the buildings for the women have even numbers of animals.

A visit to a silk market ended our day. They provided a live exhibit of how silk thread is made from several single cocoons. A single cocoon was made by only one worm. It can be recognized because it is smaller than a double cocoon and the latter can not be used to make thread; the threads in it are too tangled. Those are stretched out to form a felt used in quilts. They had many beautiful silk clothes, tapestries and other items for sale. (We found that a large part of these conducted tours is designed to take you to as many specialty markets as they can.)

Our flight to Xi’an was uneventful except that our seat mate was a geneticist M.D. who had just arrived from Toronto and was scheduled to give a talk the next day here in Xi’an. It was very hazy when we arrived and did not clear while we were in Xi’an. At least it didn’t rain.

Our guide, Winnie, and driver gave us a view of the Bell Tower in the center of the old city. It was really quite a site as it was after dark and was dramatically lighted. The next morning we were first taken to the Eastern Gate because it has the best “Feng Shui.” That is since it faces the rising sun it is the most important gate to insure good “Feng Shui.” The gate is in two parts. We drove through the first gate into a court yard. A building for the soldiers is above the outer gate and one for the officers over the inner gate. We climbed 71 steps to get to the top of the wall that is still intact around the entire city. Since the wall is wide and there were few people we asked for 10 minutes to take a brisk walk. We came to a place where we heard birds singing and chirping and when we looked over the wall we saw people in the park that follows the moat that is just outside the wall. The people had their pet birds in cages hanging in the trees or sitting on the ground while they visited or played games.

We were then shown to the soldier’s building where we received a lesson in “Feng Shui.” We were not allowed to take pictures but our teacher told us much about this belief and practice. Two different guides have told us that this is not superstition. There are many different kinds of symbols used to ensure good success and wealth. One is a carving of a head of Chinese cabbage that has been cut in half all the way down through the root. When displayed in the home or office it must be positioned so that the leaves are directed toward the entry. This insures that wealth will always be coming into the home and not leaving. In a similar way there are 3 mythical animals. One is the unicorn, another the lion and the third is the dragon horse. Our teacher spent much time telling us about the dragon horse. It has a head like a dragon with its mouth wide open, a big stomach and a fat buttock with no anus. It uses its hooves to overcome enemies. Its mouth is wide so that it can obtain large amounts of goods and wealth. Its large stomach and buttocks is where it stores the wealth and of course the fact that there is no anus means it want lose it. Some banks have the dragon horse sculpted so that the entire building represents the buttocks!! After demonstrating how to stroke the dragon horse, first open your pockets then begin at the ears, head and neck working your way back to the buttocks, then close your hands and put them in your pockets. This assures that you will have good fortune and wealth. When I refused to do likewise she asked why. I said because I don’t believe it. With that she put the drape back on the statue and continued our tour.

On our way to the terracotta warriors we were taken by another market where replicas of the warriors are made. And of course they wanted to sell us some all the way from miniatures to full size, 5’11”. In this shop they also had jade and silks and a live exhibit of the hand crafting of a silk carpet. For a large carpet 10’x12’ this takes 2 people 2 years at 9 hours a day!! We arrived at the terracotta warriors exhibit where we were treated almost as VIPs. They allowed our van to drive onto the grounds almost to the exhibit hall. Most other busses and cars parked a good 10 minutes walk away. You have all seen pictures of this subterranean army so I want try to describe it but a few notes will be of interest. Thousands of these warriors were created and placed in underground vaults ostensibly to guard the burial place of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. Before his time there were seven states that fought endlessly with each other. He was able to bring all of the states under his control and declared himself emperor in about 200 B.C. During the first ten years of this dynasty 10% of China’s population, 2 million, were conscripted to carry out the emperor’s desires. Those projects ranged from working on the great wall, 500,000, to guarding fragile borders to building his own palace and mausoleum, 700,000. There was a cycloramic movie that tried to portray the events of founding this empire and its fall that was very impressive. One final note only 4 horses and 3 or 4 men have so far been discovered intact. All of the ones you see in the pictures were reconstructed from fragments. Reasons given for this vary but the most obvious is that the chambers containing the original army was roofed over by wooden beams and planks. Upon their decay they collapsed and crushed everything under them. One final note this emperor is credited with opening the silk road and thus opening China to the world at the time the gospel was coming to the world.

Our tour guide then took us to the provincial museum where a special guide walked us through artifacts from prehistory to the last Chinese dynasty that ended in 1911-1912. There were many interesting evidences of a very advanced civilization. (Interestingly my brother Bob shared by e-mail that in Kenya, where he worked for a year, there is no such history or artifacts.) Our final site to visit was the “Big Wild Goose Pagoda.” This of course is a Buddhist temple where a thousand priests serve. We got there just as the evening services were taking place with a large display of candles. There are three statues of Buddha here. Each one is supposed to meet a different need the people have. The origin of the pagoda’s name makes and interesting story. It seems that during a time of great famine the monks at the pagoda were very distressed because the had no meat to eat or wine to drink. One day one of the monks was praying very earnestly to one of the gods when a flock of guess flew toward the tower of the pagoda. One of them, and especially large one, hit the tower and died. Then the god said to the monk see I have died to give you meat but I love the animals and don’t want you to kill any more to eat. So from that day the Buddhist monks do not eat meat or drink wine.

So our tour ended with a flight to Hangzhou where it was and still is warm and sultry, it rained last night. We went to church this morning and now I think we will go to West Lake for a walk. Tomorrow I begin work in earnest so my accounts from now on will be brief. Our love to each one of you Paul and Darleen