Buddha's finger and other exotica

Actually it doesn't really come much more exotic than that I suppose, unless you rate various officially fake Buddha's fingers up there as well.

On the 5th I went on another organised tour, but without engaging the services of an English speaking guide. I decided after last time that I was better to just muddle along. it turned out for the best as an 18 year old student and her father stepped up and offered to help me out. They were fantastic. She had a really good overall knowledge of the history and of the places we were visiting; in fact one - the tomb of one of the Han emperors - was her primary reason for wanting to visit Xi'an. One of his generals, who's remembered there too is her hero sort of. Her father is a practicing Budhist so was able to fill me in on lots of the specifically Buddhist history, tradition etc.


So we started out with a visit to a museum of Han stuff, including hundreds of terracotta figures. The Han ones aren't life sized like the Qin ones; they're about 30cm high and not as individualised. There were three basic faces to represent the different regional origins of the people. They still retain lots of colour too, unlike the Qin ones, where it mostly faded when exposed to the environment. From there we went on the Han tomb that my guide was so keen on. That included a small museum as well - this country is coming down with museums - as well as stone carvings and the tombs themselves - huge artificial hills that surround you as you walk around. With the weather as it was it was a bit of a case of "Fog on the Barrow Downs" for the Tolkein fans.


On the minibus again and we were off to visit a sort of reconstruction of an ancient village, with donkeys grinding meal and ancient looking women weaving on ancient looking looms. It was a strange kind of a hybrid of a place, with dioramas of prehistoric (neolithic and earlier) mannekins and reconstructed houses, through to a tunnel complex with exhibits of Chinese 'folk culture' I suppose you'd call it; dioramas of villagers celebrating a wedding, eating moon cakes at the Autumn Festival etc. Why a tunnel complex I hear you ask? Because in this part of Shaanxi province, people have traditionally lived in caves. Up north of here some people still do, but there are certainly lots of caves cut into the sides of banks and cliffs in this region. Oh, and they had a bear in a cage. Apparently they used to raise bears there in large numbers - I'll leave it to your imagination why they might have done that. The government of the PRC have deemed it cruel (or been convinced it's in their interests to) and banned it. Now they've only got one unfortunate beast so I suppose the cruelty has been reduced by several degrees of magnitude.


From there, it was off to the tomb of Wu Zetian, the only ruling Empress in Chinese history. (Cixi doesn't really count as there were nominally Emperors in charge, even if she had them under house arrest!) She was an interesting character, hitched very young to the aging Emperor, in an unconsumated marriage, becoming a Buddhist nun to avoid death when he heard a rumour that his line would be replaced by another named Wu, then given a reprieve after he died when one of the new Emperor's two wives conspired to get her in as a third wife in a power struggle with the other wife! I bet she regretted that decision... She ended up surviving the Emperor and ruling in her own right. When she was preparing for her own death, she began her tomb construction but whereas the tradition was to have a memorial erected covered in script extolling the virtues of the late Emperor, Wu Zetian instructed the craftsmen to leave hers blank, declaring that it was for those who survived her to write their opinions when she wasn't around to vet them. Quite remarkable really. There are a few inscriptions on there now, all of them flattering . . . Oh well, nice try. There's a monument there that she had erected for her late husband number two, the completely forgettable and forgotten (no one in the room can even remember his name) Emperor. However when the Qing Emperor put up a memorial there it was only to him. The new government has put up another recognising them both.


Which brings me to the finger of destiny. At Famensi, the Famen temple, they allegedly have one slightly crusty digit from the man himself. Actually it's only one bone, a falange. The temple itself is pretty impressive with a pagoda about twelve floors high and an underground museum. In the depths of the museum, although due to be relocated to an almost finished new building, resides the finger bone, along with three fakes. How they can possibly prove the veracity of the other one I can't possibly guess. But there it is.


Oh, and somewhere along there we also saw the underground tomb of a Tang prince, long since looted but still worth a wee look if you're in the neighbourhood.


Back to Xi'an and I got to eat the local specialty, a noodle. Actually two, but they're about 50cm long, like eating a long strip of lasagne in a yummy sauce - chilli, corriander etc. Yippee.