coffee breaks: catching up part 2 October 24th, 2011

Today’s excursion took me to Zhaoling, located in Beiling Park. It is the tomb of the Emperor Huang Taiji who lived in the late 16^th century to the early 17^th century. Buried along with him is his wife, the Empress. It was quite chilly today, the northern wind blew quite a bit. Though it was cold, I thought the weather was kind of refreshing, and the smell of said air made me feel like the coldness was running through my veins. It was quite invigorating.

Anyone who will ever have the interest to visit this tomb, the ticket for students is 30 yuan, about 5 bucks based on the current exchange rate. The entrance to this place looks like the entrance at Tiananmen square, or at the Royal palace in Shenyang, of course on a smaller scale. Once you enter, you just keep on walking street until you reach the statue of Huang Taiji. After that, you keep on walking straight until you reach the Sacred bridge, that means you are getting close to the tomb. There are several gates leading to the tomb. On the way towards the tomb, you’ll find several stone animals each symbolizing a certain trait. Once you enter 2 gates, you get to a place called the Square city, which is, well, basically a square surrounded by walls.

Actually, it’s more of a rectangle more than anything else. On each side of the wall, there’s a turret, which is where the soldiers stayed and guarded the tomb. I thought it was pretty cool. You can walk up the stairs to get to the top of the wall, and get a full view of the entire place. To get to the tomb from the ground floor, you’d have to enter through the Daming Pavilion, in which after that, you’ll see the door to the tomb. Yep, you can’t enter, because the door has been sealed since Huang Taiji’s death. But if you walk on the top of the wall, you can go on a circular path called the Crescent Point. It’s a huge mound; on top is a tree, as tradition requires it when someone of royalty is buried. This is called the Treasure peak.

I’m actually quite surprised that all this wasn’t looted or destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, which targeted things like ancient artifacts and relics of China’s past history. Everything is pretty much intact. I really liked this place and enjoyed learning something new (especially in history).

Tomorrow, the plan to is to go Wuai Market with my cousin’s cousin. I…don’t think I’ve seen him since….1998, or maybe 2002. I don’t remember. I just remember the two times I didn’t see him, he bought me a necklace in 2002, and a pair of earrings in 2006. Otherwise, I have no recollection of seeing him at anytime in the past decade. I wonder what he looks like now and if he changed (besides getting taller) from the photograph I have from 1998. Otherwise, the only memories I have of him was the two of us playing together as kids. There, they sell everything from clothes to jewelry to Chinese traditional items. I’ll have to get some stuff for people back in Davis and in Monterey as well. Maybe I should get an early start to Christmas shopping, since I have no desire to join in the madness on black Friday, or any madness for that matter.