August 17, 2007
After a delicious Chinese breakfast in the hotel, our guide escorted us to the Stele Forest, also called the Beilin Museum.
A stele is a stone slab erected in the ancient world as a monument. There is text or decorations carved into the surface of the stone. Chinese steles commemorated writers and officials through poems, portraits, or maps. Steles were also used at tombs and temples.
The Beilin Museum has a huge collection of ancient steles and stone sculptures. There are 3,000 steles in the museum, many are considered national treasures.
There was a demonstration of ink rubbings while we were there. The characters on the stone below depict four Confucian virtues.
One evening we attended the Tang Dynasty Music and Dance performance. Musicians played traditional instruments and dancers wore elaborate costumes. It was great fun!
The last tourist destination in Xi’an was the ancient stone City Wall. This was a fortification built around the original city of Xi’an.
The wall was initially built during the Tang Dynasty (616-907) and later the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) enlarged the fortification to its current size.
The rectangular wall is 8.5 miles long with four main gates and 14 smaller gates. A deep moat surrounds it. The wall is 40 feet tall, 45 feet wide at the top and 50-60 feet wide at the bottom.
There are a total of 98 ramparts which extend out from the main wall.
In the photo below, local people are having lunch just outside the City Wall
We ate at this restaurant (sorry! I don’t remember the name) and the food was delicious!!
