museum Archives - Faine Greenwood

I woke up in Chengdu and immediately realized I should get a Chinese SIM card, as well as a bus ticket to Kangding. The SIM card seemed more immediately approachable, and I walked out the door in search of one of Asia’s ubiquitous, usually slightly cleverly-concealed cellphone shops. 100 RMB later, I had a SIM card for my iPhone with a nice 3G data plan. I suppose I had expected to have to fill out paperwork and then being yelled at by someone in a starched Mao suit in exchange for the privilege, instead of handing a lady a bill and being up and running nearly instantly.

It was already lunch-time and high time for touristing, and so I hopped in one of Chengdu’s pleasantly cheap cabs and headed for the Chengdu Museum, continuing my life-long love affair with provincial museums with dodgy signage.

In search of a pre-museum lunch,I briefly walked along the river and looked through Chengdu’s interesting antiques area, which is spread along the water and featured many interesting small things, from jades to black beaded necklaces to vintage Communist literature and posters. No restaurants or snack stalls apparated, though. I tried the string of restaurants across the street: one featured real Sichaunese food downstairs and was totally full, with Western food for depressed tour groups upstairs – no go. Another had excellent looking food that only came in party-size portions. I finally settled for a Xinjiang place, where a very loud and very good-natured Uighur man served me an enormous bowl of pulled noodle soup for 14 RMB.

Vegetables with bugs on them, a theme in Chinese fine art.

I crossed the semi-deadly street to the museum, which was thankfully emptied out of tour groups in the late afternoon. I was even more pleased to find that the ticket was free after I flashed my drivers license. The collection featured a T-rex skeleton in the basement. More gorgeous ivory carvings of bug-infested vegetables, a beloved motif in fine Chinese art.

Tibetan shamans use animal bones as ornaments.

However, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I usually do, as was distracted and increasingly concerned about my inability to speak Chinese. This was compounded by my inability to find anywhere I could buy something approximating a phrasebook. I began wondering if I was going to starve to death on the Tibetan plateau, unable to say anything but “Thank you” and “where is the bathroom?”

There wasn’t too much time for language based existential terror, however, as a friend of a friend via Twitter had answered my request for assistance with navigating the vast territory that is Sichuanese cuisine. That’s how I met up with Kevin Lee.

A young Chengdu native, Kevin is one of China’s few Mormons, a fact he volunteered eventually as I asked him about his years of life in the Mountain West of the United States – he was attending university at Brigham Young University’s Idaho branch.

. Being a Mormon in China, he said, was not a very comfortable business. “You can’t really talk about it. If you’re talking about what you believe, you can mention you’re a Christian and then say you’re a Mormon, maybe.”

Attired in a white polo shirt, Kevin spoke with a California-accent with a vague Mexican inflection and plenty of entirely current West Coast slang, picked up from his overseas mission in the Sunshine State, prior to his enrollment in BYU. In fact, he had served in Sacramento, which happens to be where I went to high school – one of those bizarre geographical confluences I’ve become almost accustomed to in the course of international travel. “Oh man, Inn and Out Burger,” he said, a look of profound nostalgia on his face. “I get those whenever I go to Utah. Bomb-ass food.”

The other food in the West, he said, was less compelling. He admitted to going to Panda Express, but only because there were no other options. He also had taken to driving and road-trips, although he said that driving in Chengdu – in the midst of a sea of new drivers with a very limited understanding of road rules – was too much for him. “I do have a car. No other way to pick up girls for dates, right? You can’t just call her up and ask her to pick YOU up.”

He hadn’t been back to Chengdu in about three years but was happy to be home. “The city has changed so much,” he said, referring to the madcap pace of expansion and the immense and light-festooned buildings that were sprouting in every possible direction. “I mean, there’s as many people here as New York City.”

We hopped a surprisingly clean, if crowded bus, which cost 4 yuan, and headed to Wide-Narrow Street, a walking and shopping area of long-standing that has been renovated and airbrushed into a major tourist attraction for China’s many domestic travelers.

True to the name, there were two parallel streets, one rather narrow, and one considerably wider, with cobble-stone floors and traditionally built buildings. The businesses were rather less old-fashioned, with an exceedingly elegant Starbucks, various and sundry fancy nightclubs with young Chinese men belting out American songs, and a sea of luxurious looking restaurants. We stopped for a snack of an entire potato deep-fried on a stick with chili powder, and watched various tourist demonstrations of tea-pouring, traditional candy making in the shape of crabs, phoenixes, and oxen, and the production of Chinese crafts.

Standard hot pot operating procedure. His shirt is on, though.

For dinner, we stopped at a very popular and very large hot-pot restaurant. Kevin was surprised I was interested, noting “My Mexican friends love hotpot and spicy foods, but the white kids…man, they don’t like it.” (I ventured that this was at least in part a function of being in the Mountain West in the US, the land where Flavor Goes to Die in Solitude and Disrepute).

Many of the male clients had taken off their shirts, a seeming prerequisite to successful hot-pot consumption. We ordered tofu, beef, pork meatballs, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and bacon, which were brought to the table raw. The half-and-half hotpot came out in a ying-yang shape, with one side filled with a mild pork broth with green onion, jujube, and spices, the other side filled with the vaguely evil looking Sichuanese standard of chili oil, Sichuan peppercorns, dried chilis, and onion.

In the evening, we headed to the Jinli Walking Street, which was recently renovated. “It definitely wasn’t like this five years ago,” said an obviously impressed Kevin, as we walked down alleys filled with craft-makers, designer clothing outlets, fast food restaurants, and yet another very high-end Starbucks.

There were yet more expensive pubs, including one where a handsome young Chinese man sang American songs in front of a Confederate flag. I’m guessing they’re not aware of the context, though to be fair, it seems many Americans aren’t either.

We were far too full to eat anything, but we were both impressed by the long strip of snack places, featuring the full range of Chengdu specialties. “I want to come back here and eat everything,” said Kevin. I seconded that emotion.

Wherever I go, I always visit the museum, operating off the assumption that a people’s hand-picked selection of interesting objects are always worth seeing. Provincial or national – I love them all. The Shanghai Museum, unsurprisingly, is a particularly worthy entrant. Most pleasantly? It’s free.

The Shanghai Museum is situated near the People’s Park area of the city, and is built in an aggressively modernist but not unpleasant building, with pinkish brick and a large circular arch over the top of it. You won’t miss it unless you are very stupid.

The downside of a free museum is that everybody wants to go, and there always seems to be a considerable line to get in, which is slowed down by the required security check. You do not have to check your bags, and cameras are permitted, which is a nice touch. I’d suggest coming here on a weekday to avoid spending an hour waiting in line in the sun with a lot of other sweaty, mildly exasperated people.

Split into four floors, the museum has a particularly interesting selection of ancient artifacts that were found in the vicinity of Shanghai, proving China’s authority as one of the oldest cultures on the planet.

There are also bronzes, including bells and some immense drums, a wide selection of Chinese landscape painting, a display encompassing China’s ethnic minorities and their traditional outfits, and even a display of ancient coins. Signage usually has some English translation.

Here are some photos of the things I liked best in the museum, in no particular order whatsoever:

A clay statue of a dog from the Eastern Han tradition, likely dating from between AD 25 to 220. This charmingly realistic beast hails from an interesting tradition of dog art, crafted to guard the tombs of the dead – many of whom, presumably, were particularly fond of their pets. Dogs were divided into watch dogs, hunting dogs, and dogs for eating, per the Liji (Book of Rites) from the era,

A Tang Dynasty lion sculpture, likely from between A.D. 618 and 907. Like most of the lovely objects here, it was likely a tomb decoration. More information was not forthcoming from the museum, but you can read more about the Tang tradition of funeral statuary here.

I’ve always been particularly taken by ancient Chinese metalworking, which is intricate, exotic, and far more impressive than its contemporary works in the Western world. This cowrie-container with eight yaks on top likely hails from the Western Han, from 206 BC to AD 8. Cowrie shells are thought to have begun to be used as currency during the Shang Dynasty, around the 16th to 11th century BC, and continued to be used as such up until the Ming and Yuan dynasties in some regions of China. This proves that these shells have value beyond adorning the necks of annoying people from California.

This is a pair of spectacular gold hairpins in the shape of shrimp from the Ming Dynasty, unearthed at the site of what is now the Huili Middle School in Shanghai’s Huangpu District. The Internet Oracle reveals very little about this dig beneath a middle school in the heart of Shanghai, but I’d definitely like to hear the story. Regardless, I wish this kind of thing was back in style, although I also know I’d lose them within five minutes if I owned them.

This rather Byzantine-looking Buddha relief is from the rather short-lived Northern Qi Dynasty, which ruled between 550 and 577 AD, and was the successor state of the Eastern Wei Dynasty. Buddhism is thought to have arrived in China during the Han Dynasty, and by the time of the Northern Qi, it had many well-matured customs within China proper.

Much art of the era demonstrates a distinct influence from the styles practiced in Western Asia, indicating considerable cultural exchange. I’ve recently been very interested in the Buddhist art of Afghanistan, and it’s interesting to see how these traditions spread across Asia and picked up influences from the Greek art brought over as early as the time of Alexander the Great.

These are processional figures from the Ming Dynasty tomb of Pan Yongzheng, who was buried in the current environs of Shanghai. (He is NOT the Western Qing Emperor – I can tell you were getting confused). I would like to tell you more about him, but I am encountering the existential limits of Googling for Chinese historical information in English.

This painting is entitled “Peasant, Bamboo, and Chrysanthemum,” and was painted by Hua Yan in the Qing Dynasty – sometime during his lifespan of 1682 to 1756. A native of Shanghang in Fujian province, he relocated to the art centers of Hangzhou and Yangzhou as he aged – becoming one of the famous “Eight Eccentrics.”

We should all aspire to become a big-e Eccentric in our twilight years. On an additional note, I’ve always thought the Chinese were better at painting birds than anybody else.

This ox-shaped zun (wine vessel) hails from the Late Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, from the early 6th century to 476 BC. It’s a stint in Chinese history particularly known for impressive, stylized bronzes, which I’ve always been partial to. On a related note: plowing through Chinese history again in an effort to add some context to all the nice museum pieces I see.

Faine Greenwood

Tag: museum

Chengdu: The Museum and Some Hot Pot

China: The Shanghai Museum