Friday June 24, 2005
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This is the ultimate place to find your souvenirs and the flea market scavenger's heaven. You will save so much money, compared to the friendship stores and you will have so much more fun.
PanJiaYuan (潘家園舊貨市場) is a huge antique market at the south-eastern corner of Beijing's 2nd ring. It is blast spending few hours here. The whole place is a big courtyard the size of few football fields. The courtyard empasses a cloister at the center. The cloister, centered in the courtyard, has about 15 to 20 meters of paved space to the outer walls. The whole place is carpeted with vendors, each one occupying 1 to 3 square meters of elongated floor space. This means, yes, thousands of them. |
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I found few rubbings from the famous stelae in Xi'an. For thousands of years, Chinese erected these stelae everywhere. I don't know when, but one of the government collected them all into this place in Xi'an. That makes rubbing operations much more convenient. People put a piece of cotton paper on top of the stela and rub ink over the paper. The result is a perfect replica of whatever inscribed.
This one is from a famous and poignant general in the late Song dynasty. He was framed by the prime minster then and died tragic. After his death, the Song dynasty toppled and Mongolians began the Yuan dynasty. Another proof that Great Walls never worked. A corruptor is always available. |
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岳飛(1103~1142)
Yue Fei(1103~1142)