Day 6: City Tour

Temperature of the day: >36 deg celsius

Weather: Hot and Sunny

Agenda: City Tour

Everyone, exhausted from yesterday's long day, had to wake up early to assemble before 8.30am, which isn't easy considering the fact that many of them usually wake up at 8am. Even I, who usually wakes up earlier than the rest, was too exhausted and slowly crawl out of bed.

The first destination was the East Lake (东湖) to the east of the WUST campus. On a bright and early morning...

old men fishing

I was attracted up the pavilion by the sound of his flute

After that we went to a museum nearby, the Hubei Provincial Museum. The first thing that struck me was the architecture, with large sloping roof surfaces similar to pyramids, it looked exactly like the Palace complex of an ancient dynasty.

We were also lead on a guided tour of the artifacts found in the Tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng, which was actually discovered in a neighboring county also in Hubei Province. Among the exhibits were many actual bronze and lacquer wares, as well as a great collection of musical instruments, and other reproductions of original artifacts.

a reproduction of a soldier's armor recovered from the tomb, as the original armor, made of animal hide and other materials were rotted

ancient technology to make long weapons that are light, strong and flexible

ancient weapons, they have to be long to attack from a chariot or against enemies in a chariot

not fishes, but the actual arrow tips that are still sharp today

There were so many interesting exhibits, however the tour guide was unable to go through every single one, perhaps due to time constraints and the arrival of subsequent tour groups. Then we went up on our own to visit the other collections.

The Exhibition Hall of Prince Liangzhuang's Tomb, most of which were artifacts of high value, made of gold, jade and inlaid with other precious stones

a gold bullion

the crown

gold belt inlaid with gemstones

a jade court official's belt decorated with dragon and cloud patterns

Then at another exhibition on writings, I saw how actual bamboo strips were used as books. It turns out those movies and shows were all wrong, as the bamboo strips were really narrow, so the words were so very tiny. How tiny?

There were also other exhibits of ancient writing tools from other cultures too, such as this book made from Pattra leaves from India

After the museum, was lunch! We had several local must-trys, such as the famous Wuchang fish, which the tour guide said Chairman Mao was a great fan of. To cut a long story short, here is the aftermath of lunch.

Yeap, I ate most of the fish, especially the stomach which was very nice and oily

Houngsheng, Liangxun and I "performed" so well at our table that we were invited over to other tables to help clear the Wuchang Fish too

After lunch, we went to the Yellow Crane Tour, which was originally built as a military watchtower because of the good vantage point at the top of the tower (9 levels) would enable defending troops to spot incoming enemies from a mile away (or more). Apparently, the Yellow Crane Tower has been rebuilt many times due to war, fire and other reasons, luckily they stuck to the same grand design.
The climb up was quite tiring, but made even more so due to the debilitating heat. However, this is not the end. We had to visit the 步行街 at 江汉路 again, so Sheila, Jiali, Dyana, Houng Sheng and I decided to just spend the 1 hour at Starbucks to stave off the heat.

And finally, at 6pm, when it got cooler, we went back to the hostel.

Reflection:

Although Singapore doesn't have a long and rich history as China (but of course), we should always stay proud of our history, and always take an interest because the past is the best mirror to look back at the present and into the future.