XiAn is an old city, one of the capitals of many dynasties in ancient China.
Therefore, in the around, there are many relics such as Drum Pavilion (鼓
樓), Bell Pavilion (鐘樓), Big Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔), Small Wild Goose
Pagoda (小雁塔), the Museum of Stone Tablets (碑林), the Tomb of the First
Emperor of Qin (秦), the Vaults of Terra-cotta Warriors and Horses (兵馬
俑坑), the Tomb of Princess Yongtai (永泰) of Tang Dynasty and Huaqing Pool
(華清池), etc.
It was the first time I had a chance to go to XiAn, and as not much time
was allowed, I could only visit some of them. The first place I went was
the Vaults of Terra-cotta Warriors and Horses, situated some 1.5 km east
of the Tomb of the First Emperor of Qin Dynasty, three vaults on display
and many others being dug. All warriors, as well as horses, are lifelike
and lifesize, some holding bronze spears and some carrying bows and arrows,
and others following chariots, all in war array. According to the estimation
of experts, there are 8000 figures and horses, and over 100 chariots. These
warriors were buried there as bodyguards to the Emperor. People in the
old time of China believed that when one died his ghost would live in the
nether world just as he had lived in the upper world. So his sons would
put into the tomb all the clothes, jewelry and utensils he needed in his
life in the darkness. If he was an emperor, his sons would in addition
have clay warriors and horses made and buried near his tomb to protect him
from any danger of being attacked by other sovereign ghosts. The heads of
the figures are movable and removable. Figures wearing caps of different
shapes are officers of different ranks while those without caps are soldiers.
We can say without boasting that it is the eighth wonder of the world,
considering the number, the size and the workmanship.
Huaqing Pool, located at the foot of Lishan Mountain (驪山), is famous for
the pool, in which Yang Yuhuan (楊貴妃 died in 755 AD), the royal concubine
of Emperor Xuanzong (玄宗) of Tang Dynasty (on the throne: 712 AD----755
AS), often came to take her bath. The pool is in a small room, made of
smooth stone and shaped like a four-petaled flower. But the buildings there
are not those constructed in Tang Dynasty. The original ones were destroyed
during the wars waged by subsequent dynasties and the present ones were
rebuilt later. It was said that before the royal concubine came from the
palace, the guardsmen held up two lines on either side from which cloth
hung down to form a passageway so that no one, maybe by chance in the vicinity,
could see her.
Near the room the pool is, in the same bungalow, is another room, in which
Jiang Jieshi (蔣介石) stayed during the XiAn Incident in 1936. Nearly halfway
up the hillside stands a stone arbor called “Catch-Jiang” Arbor. During
the night the incident happened, when Jiang heard the report of guns, he
quickly climbed out of the back window and ran barefooted as fast as he could
up the hill. He hid himself in a crevice of the rock near the arbor when
he was found and taken prisoner; hence the name of the arbor.
On Lishan Mountain there used to be a beacon tower in West-Zhou Dynasty.
A story goes back to that time about the tower. The queen of King Youwang
(幽王), the last king of West-Zhou Dynasty (on the throne: 781 B.C.----771
B.C.), never even smiled in her life. The king tried every means in his
power to make her smile, but his efforts were all in vain. He asked her
what she liked best when a little girl. She said that she liked to hear
the sound of tearing cloth. So the king ordered many scrolls of cloth to
be brought into the palace and had them torn one by one to shreds, but the
queen still didn’t smile. Once he took her there on the mountain. When
they stood on the top, a wonderful idea struck him. He ordered his men to
ignite the beaconfire. The lords hurried there with their troops, banners
upheld and drums sounding, thinking that the enemies invaded the kingdom
again. When they saw only the king and queen sitting on the summit, they
looked at one another and hurried away with banners rolled up and drums
muffled. At last the queen smiled----such sweet smile that made her look
more beautiful and attractive. But later when the enemies actually invaded
and the beaconfire was lit, no one came to the rescue, and the king was
killed and the queen was captured.
The whole place of Huaqing Pool is a beautiful garden with flowers and
trees, a pond and pavilions around it. There are also rows of small bathroom
where a visitor can take a hot spring water bath. It is good to one’s
health. The temperature of the water is just a little higher than that
of normal human body.
The Tomb of Empress Wu Zetian (武則天), situated west of XiAn, has not been
explored yet. Empress Wu in Tang Dynasty was the first and the last empress,
that is to say, the sole empress in the long history of China. In the
Chinese feudal society, the status of women was so low that they were dependent
on their parents as a girl, on their husbands after marriage and on their
sons as a widow. Ot was against the convention and conception of feudalism
that a woman could be a sovereign, but Empress Wu managed to be one and maintained
her reign for so many years. There must have been something that we can
learn. According to history, she chose some upright men to be her courtiers
and made some wise policies for the interests of people. These might account
for her long reign. By her order given before her death, a tall stone tablet
was put up posthumously at one side in front of her tomb without any Chinese
characters engraved on it. She meant by it that she would leave it for the
posterity to inscribe with whatever comments they would make on her merits
or demerits.
Not far from her tomb is the tome of Princess Yongtai, her granddaughter,
now open to the visitors. Through a declining passageway, I went down into
the innermost part of the tomb, where the princess’s coffin stands. On
the walls of the passageway I saw some pretty frescoes. Two exhibition
halls were set up on each side of the tomb in the foreground, in which on
display are all the things taken from the tomb; among them are the well-known
three-colored porcelain camels, horses and figurines of Tang Dynasty. One
camel of a larger size carries some smaller figurines on its back, its head
raised high and the figurines all playing musical instruments except one
woman in the middle. An interpreter was explaining to some foreign visitors,
and in the end he added, “The woman in the middle is singing and the camel
is singing, too.” And a laughter rose among the listeners.
The museum of XiAn is in the city. Besides the famous three-colored porcelain
figurines, the exhibition includes a few coins of ancient Persia and some
earthenware of thousands of years ago found underground, etc. But the chief
exhibition is the sculptures and engravings in stone: squatting stone lions
and other stone animals bigger than lifesize, stone coffins, stone Buddhas,
stone dragons and deer in relief and mostly stone tablets of different dynasties
and different sizes, a few tablets with stone turtles under them, of course,
in one piece. Whole books and articles were inscribed on them. Therefore,
these have often been imitated since then by the learners of calligraphy.
Chinese calligraphy is also a fine art and always goes hand in hand with
Chinese paintings while the tablet is a thesaurus for Chinese calligraphy
to be kept and handed down.
