China - A Whole New World

(May 25th) If you had asked me a couple of years ago I would never have guessed that my first trip to Asia would be to China. And I definitely wouldn't have imagined that instead of heading to one of the major international cities, I would travel to Hunan province instead. Changsha, Hunan's capital is still a sizeable city - maybe a little fewer people than New York City. It is not like Shanghai or Beijing though, here there are virtually no Westerners. People speaking English is a rarity. I am extremely grateful to Yuan, without whom I certainly would have been lost at best, and with whom I had a wonderful time and witnessed what China is really like. For my first full day in China without travel, we headed to the Hunan Provincial Museum. The day was cold (for Changsha) and rainy - good thing we planned to be indoors.

The Hunan Provincial Museum normally has some extensive exhibits, but we went to see a touring exhibit that is here for a couple of weeks only. The exhibit dates from the Qin Dynasty (around 200BC) and revolves around the tomb of the same emperor you may be familiar with if you have seen 'The Mummy 3' and the tombs of his family. He's the guy with the terracotta warriors, but this exhibit is from the tombs themselves. Here's a sword that was used by one of the princes - amazingly sharp for being over 2000 years old.

It was a lot of fun, but a little bit of a challenge to shoot in here. Light was low, and I wasn't permitted to use flash. The sheer number of people visiting the museum is something I have never seen before... These kind of crowds just don't exist in American museums. So getting a shot without the crowds, lit well, from a good angle, and without all the reflecting glare on the display glass took some thinking. This intricately decorated device I shot here is something that the ancient Chinese used both as a refrigerator to keep food cold or to keep food warm depending on what the food called for. Amazing invention - quite large too and made of heavy bronze.

In the tomb there were loads of musical instruments. This bell is made of bronze is one of many. The bells typically are all suspended and the player will play from the roughly 20 or so bells. Later on we heard them played and the sound is quite melodious.

Much of the things kept in the tomb revolve around food. There are gazillions of dishes for serving and eating food. This is one of the ones for holding meat, cutely carved in the shape of a pig.

There were also some figures made to keep watch over the tomb. Many of these were mythical animals that are beyond description. This one is more traditional, with the likeness of a stag. We saw thousands of artifacts in the museum, many of them quite beautiful. It is amazing the amount of sophistication and culture already present in China at this ancient time.