Dartmouth FSP: 2015 Beijing, China

Ms. Liu Heran, Director of the Special Fund Committee of Ancient Chinese Books, the Chinese Culture Heritage Foundation, delivered a lecture on the culture of traditional Chinese study for us on August 11, 2015.

The culture of traditional Chinese study has an early origin:

Ms. Liu also brought us actual "treasures" used in a traditional Chinese study:

History is never far away from us. The July 7th Incident (1937) at Lugou qiao, i.e., Marco Polo Bridge, marks the beginning of the war of Chinese people's resistance against Japanese aggression. On August 8, 2015, we visited this significant historical site.

Nakata's family is one of the donors of the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. We thus got an opportunity to meet with the Deputy Director of the museum, Prof. Li Zongyuan.

We visited Daoist medical Dr. Yu Xuqin.

While Dr. Yu introduced acupuncture, we became interested in meihua zhen, plum-blossom needles.

Xing laoshi offered to demonstrate the bloodletting treatment with plum-blossom needles:

We visited the most famous Daoist temple Baiyun Guan in Beijing on Thursday, August 6, 2015.

We enjoyed hitting the bell in the middle of an ancient Chinese coin:

Learning how to do Daoist greetings was also lots of fun:

In front of the god of wealth:

The Six Steeds of Zhao Mausoleum are six 7th century Chinese stone reliefs of Emperor Taizong of Tang's (r. 626-649) horses.

Two of them, the bottom left one (6-4) and the bottom middle one (6-5) in the above stamps, were smuggled to the U.S. in 1916 and currently are in the museum at the University of Pennsylvania.

The other four are in the Forest of Stelae museum in Xi'an, China, and we viewed the originals:

However, these precious art pieces were already cut into pieces in 1910s by the smugglers. Who said ancient masterpieces of art had been shipped to the US or European countries in order to get better preserved?

It has been widely accepted that the terracotta army excavated from Xi'an is the 8th wonder of the world. On the Army Day in China, August 1st, we visited the Qin terracotta army in their original pits.

Inside History

 

Reflecting on History

 

Loving History

 

Being Part of History

On the evening of July 31, we visited the Muslim Street in Xi'an. Most of us enjoyed the famous local steamed bread with lamb 羊肉泡馍:

We were surprised by the way of making noodles on the street:

Stir-frying yogurt was also something in which we were interested:

Above the tombs:

Inside a tomb:

Reconstructed tomb objects:

Empress Wu Zetian's tomb:

Obviously, we visited lots of museums.

And, some of them encouraged hands-on observation:

Check online, you will find many things were considered the 9th Wonder of the World. On Friday, July 31, 2015, we visited one of them in Baoji 宝鸡, Northwest China's Shannxi province -- a finger bone of the Sakyamuni Buddha, i.e., the Buddha's relic.

In front of the gate of Wisdom 般若.

The Buddha's "True Relic"