18. Teaching in China
I continued on my way along the street of art shops as it curved to run below the wall. The base of the wall was lined with people selling art prints and one used almost all her wiles to try to persuade me to buy something from her!
My goal was “The Forest of Steles”. Those of you who have learned about Ancient History would remember that a stele is a stone tablet, usually with writing carved on it. This museum was started hundreds of years ago by an Emperor who wanted to prevent scribal error. A few months before I left Queensland and before I thought it was possible for me to go to China I picked up a book called “The Jesus Sutras” on special in
Brisbane. This book outlines the recently recovered history of Nestorian Christianity in
China from around the 6th century. I read in it that there is a Christian stele in this museum. The museum has several buildings. They house the collection of that first Emperor and many other stones that have been collected over the centuries. The total is over three thousand.
The contents include the complete Analects of Confucius (Kong Tze) on about 120 stones, many examples of beautiful calligraphy, excellent and renowned poems, and famous views. Many are set in walls but the most impressive rise from the backs of large stone turtles. All are carved from a single block. In about the third hall I came to I found what I was looking for, the Nestorian Stele. Many steles had plaques next to them describing them in Chinese and English and it was this that enabled me to find the Christian one. It was as indecipherable as any of the others to my untrained eye but the cross at the top is intelligible enough. The light was in the wrong place but I set my tripod up and took the best picture I could.
Like all the museums in
Xi’an, this one had a gift shop. It sold rubbings of the most famous steles and I recognized many of the items that I saw on sale by the art sellers by the Wall. Of course, I bought the t-shirt, two in fact. One is of a famous poem with the characters artfully created by the leaves of a bamboo plant and the other is a depiction of the God of learning as a character with his foot resting on another character and his hand holding another. Together its three characters represent academic success.
I returned to the hostel for a while then went out walking, past the Bell Tower in the centre of town that used to mark sunrise and past the Drum Tower that marked sunset (or was it the other way around – if anyone knows tell me). Near the
Drum
Tower there is an arched tunnel into the Muslim quarter. There are many attractive wares there. Many, perhaps, are fakes or reproductions but there is no faking of pieces of embroidered cloth with stitches too small for my eye to separate.
Next day I went on a Wild Goose chase. I looked for the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, the Large Wild Goose Pagoda and the
Shaanxi
Museum. The only one I found was the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. It is a 13 tiered tower (ta) which was originally a storehouse for Buddhist relics but is not in religious use now. I climbed to the top by gradually narrowing staircases to see a very uninspiring view of a grubby modern city. The haze and smog of winter prevented any distant view of anything more exciting. On the grounds there was a small temple to Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin is the Goddess of Mercy and regarder of cries. She is a Chinese transformation of the Buddha Avalokitesvara and scholars believe the concept was influenced by Christian beliefs about Mary, Christ’s mother. Unfortunately the temple is now a display room and I felt no residual atmosphere of holiness. The only thing that impressed me greatly on the site was a photo of the Pagoda with a huge crack running down it. It was damaged in an earthquake which robbed it of a couple of stories and left it split in two. After the Revolution the Government had it repaired. I have discovered that in
China the Government is very conscious of heritage and their policies of preservation of cultural sites and ethnic minority uniqueness can be quite enlightened.
Xi’an showed much evidence of this.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 12:30 am and is filed under Teaching in China, Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.