Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!

Monday, June 28, 2010

Jade Suits And Dead Pigs

We got a little bit of a late start leaving Hong Kong, but thankfully everything went pretty smooth getting into China. We took a taxi to the train station and took the train to Shenzhen. I’ve been to Shenzhen before for a research project for school doing consulting for Kingway Brewery. While we were in Hong Kong, I had Henk try some of their beer… which has gotten dirt cheap! Wonder how they are doing financially… Anyways we didn’t spend much time in Shenzhen since there isn’t much to do, but we got a decent view of the city from the next train we jumped on.

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This time we were on our way to Guangzhou – a popular city just an hour or so away from Shenzhen. We were considering staying overnight there, but since there wasn’t too much to do in the city (and Henk really wanted to see the Dutch play their game the next evening… and we’d be on a bus that evening otherwise) we decided to see one museum instead and take a sleeper bus that evening to Yangshuo.

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So! Guangzhou! We headed to the mausoleum of the Nanyue King Zhao Mo of Nanyue State of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 24 CE), who we learned about earlier in the Hong Kong History Museum. Later on we’d go into the museum which held both reconstructions of artifacts buried in the rooms and amazingly preserved examples of the artifacts themselves. For simplicity, I’ll put the pictures of the artifacts we saw within my descriptions of the different chambers. That way you’ll know exactly what was where!

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The tomb was a narrow burial chamber with multiple ‘rooms,’ each of which had a different purpose. The tomb had been flooded with water a few times so much of the goodies left inside have melted away. We learned from the signs around the tomb that it had been blocked by earth to prevent robbery. Furthermore, there were large jars placed around containing foods and fruit along with funeral ornaments. The antechamber further in the tomb had – get this – painted walls and ceiling in red and black cloud patterns. There was also a body found in this chamber which had been sacrificed… probably a servant or eunuch.

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Next we walked to the east and west side chambers. The east side chamber used to have an awesome set of engraved bells used as part of an Ancient Yue musical instrument known as a “goudiao” to entertain the King. This chamber was also a storeroom for ritual objects and dining room objects such as wine containers or tableware. Before getting to the west chamber, we poked our heads into the main coffin room. In this room was a large lacquered screen and two coffins, an inner and outer coffin that contained the remains of the King. The base and top decorations of the screen remained preserved but the wood on the screen had rotted away. Through high powered microscopes researchers were able to see the color and pattern that had been painted on the wood. Thus they were able to reconstruct the screen itself.

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We later found out that the King was buried in a jade and silk thread garment and his head was resting on a pearl pillow. Jade was believed by the Han people to be a powerful ornament which could preserve dead bodies. Many layers of jade disks and jade jewelry were found around/on the King as well. There was also a weapons collection in here. Preserved armor and swords have been found, and the armor has been reconstructed to its original design. The west side chamber was another storage room for personal objects of the King. Mirrors, medicines, (medicinal stones such as amethyst, sulphur, and turquoise) silver boxes, silk fabrics, and iron tools were all found in this area. It was absolutely shocking to me that silk fabrics were found, mostly decayed but STILL after more than 2000 years present in their form. While the silk pieces just look like lumps to the eye, high powered microscopes again were used to detect the color and pattern of the original material.

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In the west side room (different from the chambers) there were a bunch of corpses found, seven in total. Found with them was the Seal of the Leading Chef, along with the remains of sacrificed animals, indicating that the people were probably the King’s chefs and servants. The east side room had four concubines in lacquered coffins that each had various funeral objects and their personal seals buried with them as well. The most important concubine was “Lady Right” who had the most beautiful burial artifacts with her. The seals of the concubines were preserved in the museum as well.

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After our educating experience in the museum, Henk and I went back to the bus station to settle our tickets for that evening. In the time remaining we chilled out in the air-conditioned KFC, and then later in the bus terminal, getting something to eat and working on this blog! The next time I write to you all it will be about one of the most beautiful cities in all of China…

The “sleeper” bus ride to Yangshou wasn’t very comfortable. In fact, the seats weren’t beds and didn’t even recline one bit. We both attempted to get some sleep and surprisingly arrived relatively rested the next morning in Yangshou around 9:00 AM. Trying to carry my heavy backpack on the extremely wet and slippery tiles (our flip-flops are not the best shoes for this weather) I fell (but was OK!) and Henk and some locals helped me into a dumpling shop on the corner. I vowed to get some new shoes while we ordered soup and dumplings for breakfast. After breakfast Henk went to check out a hostel some tout had been pushing us to see (actually turns out it was a nice place for a very decent price) while I waited in the dumpling shop. We were getting a little worried at this point – all we had seen was rain and more rain since we got into the city! Henk came back with his approval of the place and we set off there with our bags. Once we settled into the room we went out to explore the city.

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We had booked our Li River trip and show for the evening (Impressions, it is awesome!) quite quickly since I knew from my previous visit to the area that those were the two main attractions. We were put on a bus and driven out to about halfway between Yangshou and Guilin to start our tour. But I was a bit surprised when we went for our Li River adventure… we had our own private little boat! Well, fancy motorized raft. But still, that’s even cooler! We sailed down the river admiring the amazing limestone cliffs all around us. I pointed out things I remembered from my last time on the Li River to Henk – the shape of a bunch of horses in the rock face, and other shapes they told us about back then.

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Very soon we thought we were seeing things. Something was floating, legs straight up in the water, looked large, pink, and quite bloated. Is it… it was! A dead pig belly up, floating with us down the river. As we continued our trip we found this to be a pattern. It became a game of ‘spot the next dead pig.’ We must have seen almost a dozen dead pigs at various points floating around! Yikes. Later on when we drove to Guilin I discovered the source: there was the ‘Guilin Pig Breeding’ facility situated along roadside near the river. Could it be true that they are dumping their dead pigs into the river? I looked up some articles on this subject and found out that yes, it is a big problem in China that companies and farmers dump their dead animals into the river to get rid of them.

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By 3:30 PM our river adventure came to an end. We had someone pick us up from our ending point and bring us back to the bus drop off area where we drove back to Yangshou. Later while relaxing in the room we found out that the evening show of Impressions had been canceled due to the high water level (it had been raining all day) and we would have to go the following evening. No problem as long as we’d get to see it! Instead we went out for an Indian food dinner and saw the city of Yangshou at night. Man, has that area changed in just a few years. Everywhere I looked I swore to Henk that I didn’t remember seeing ‘that building’ or ‘that entire walking street and wall of buildings!’ At first he questioned my memory, but when we asked inside the Indian restaurant we had it confirmed to us that the whole area (including that restaurant) had been built up over just the last 2 years. WOW!

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That evening was the soccer game Henk really wanted to watch, the Netherlands vs. Slovakia. I worked on some of our plans for Tibet using the WiFi in the bar while Henk cheered along as his team won the night’s game. All of the commentary was in Mandarin, so it made it a bit difficult to follow what was going on! (At least, their opinions of it. Raising your voice and shouting when there is almost a goal is universal for all languages.) Oh! One thing I have to warn you all about that we witnessed that day/night – they do smoke in the bars, on the buses, everywhere in China and don’t care at all that you are inhaling their second hand smoke. So make sure to stay away from the people who blatantly light up! (If you can.) I’ll let Henk take over now and tell you about our next few days and his impression of Impressions!

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posted by Sublime at 10:24 PM

1 Comments:

Hallo Lieverds,

Wat weer een mooi verhaal.Prachtig.Ik kan het haast niet geloven,wat jullie allemaal zien en meemaken.En wat zie je er geweldig uit Francesca,Henk-Jan jij moet niet magerder worden hoor.Jullie moeten goed voor jezelf zorgen hoor.Heel veel liefs Omaxxx

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 1:52:00 AM GMT+7  

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