Monday, January 12, 2004
This is Beijing ... Another Museum
See photos of the Altar of Agriculture and Museum of Ancient Architecture.
Our sightseeing excursions to Beijing have been very leisurely over the past months. Because we were here in 2002, and part of a tour which made sure that we saw all the most important sites, we’ve been able to chose the less well-known places for our visits. We’ve avoided the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven and so on, although we plan to see these again, we hope, in the company of friends and family who decide to visit us in the spring and summer.
Over Christmas week, we visited the Altar of Agriculture and Museum of Ancient Architecture, the name alone an enticement! Located west of the Temple of Heaven compound, which takes up a huge area in the southeast section of the city, the museum makes no claims to the public or casual passer by that it even exists. We were somewhat taken aback when the taxi driver stopped, saying we’d reached our destination. It was a narrow street lined with very old shops. There were few people around, and we hesitated after we got out of the car. However, the driver of our red taxi (base rate 10Y, and 1.20 per km thereafter) pointed straight ahead, and we saw a gate with signs which suggested that indeed, there was something important ahead.
We strolled into a garden area badly in need of a clean up, and eventually came to a ticket booth and a couple of attendants who directed us onward. One of the attendants had just finished hanging out her washing on the fence outside the booth. At 10:30 in the morning, we were the only 4 people around. We followed the signs and soon came to a large open area with a long single storey hall to our left and smaller buildings to our right. Straight ahead was a park like area with a large stone platform surrounded by a white marble balustrade, raised several steps above the ground. This structure was originally built of wood during the Ming dynasty in 1531 and then replaced with the permanent stone structure during the Qing dynasty in 1754 by the very busy Emperor Qianlong, see our report on Chengde. This was the viewing platform from which the Ming and Qing courts could watch the Emperor in his heavily embroidered chrome yellow silk robes, plow the required number of furrows and then plant the seeds which showed that he had some idea of agriculture and was therefore acceptable to the agriculture gods, and worthy of good planting and harvests for the year. He then proceeded to watch his nobles do the same thing. This was the call to the peasants all over the country to undertake the farming work. Sir James Frazer of Golden Bough (1922) fame would have been happy to note the priest-king-fertility god function in action. The field where the plowing would have occurred - called the Land of One and Three-Tenth Mu -- is now part of a nursery school playground. Slides, swings, and teeter totters seemed to be the fruits of whatever plowing had happened recently!
On our way back to the large halls we had seen earlier, we explored a large open square along which ranged a series of stone altars with niches containing the names of various deities and ancestors. The altars were carved in familiar Chinese motifs of waves, water and mountains. We also passed a small stone building with three open arches, a silk burning furnace. Here the Emperor and nobles wrote prayers and messages on pieces of silk, which were then cast into the furnace to rise as smoke to the gods. To us this seemed an early form of e-mail, accustomed as we are to sending messages off into the ether! Was the Emperor anticipating the future?
There were four long low halls enclosing a very large courtyard paved with stone tiles, with a few ancient pine trees in one corner. Their exteriors had been carefully restored, painted in glowing colours to emphasize the elaborate brackets at the eaves. The tiled roofs were decorated with fabulous animals at each ridge, creating intriguing silhouettes against the winter sky.
As we entered the first hall, from nowhere a lady approached us for our tickets, and instructed us that we must view the buildings in a certain order. The halls themselves were dark, dingy and very cold – the dead cold of buildings which have felt no heat for a long time. And if their function was to show off their inherent architectural features, they for the most part missed the point, since someone had lowered all the ceilings with crating to accommodate lighting which wasn’t turned on! These buildings contained various artifacts, mostly models of types of ancient architecture -- the wooden bracketing system used in the highly decorative eaves of old buildings, the structure of pagodas, bridges, covered walkways. We noted the ancient Chinese architect’s inventiveness and total dependence on wood. The fact is that buildings with bracketed roof structures take lots and lots of wood! We wished our two architect friends George and Ken were with us, both to explain and to marvel at the models before us. The hall which outlined the development of Chinese architecture from caves and holes in the ground to the magnificent buildings of the later dynasties was so poorly lit that we could hardly read the signs explaining each of the displays. It was also very cold, and with our runny noses and hacking coughs, we decided not to stay long there.
A huge area of one of the halls was taken up with a model of Beijing in 1949. We looked down as a bird would on the city laid out before us. Ancient Imperial compounds, waterways and parks helped us get our bearings. We were reminded that in 1644, the Manchus divided Beijing into north and south cities, and ordered all other Chinese to live south of the Qian Men (gate). The Qian Men (gate) is just south of Tiananmen Square. As well, we could see that the more famous Temple of Heaven and Altar of Heaven were just a few blocks from this museum, which in ancient times would all have been part of the same extensive worship area.
As we entered the final hall, we felt warmth! We were bathed in light! There were other people here! In fact a tour guide with a small group of Japanese and a friendly guard who gave Ken permission to take photos. And what a wealth of objects was housed here! There was no information. However, we were excited by unbelievably complicated and baroque carved screens, desks, tables, shelves, imperial thrones, all jumbled together with no particular order, and all within easy reach, unprotected. The collection of porcelain was truly awesome, and the scroll paintings and calligraphy were exceptional. We were astonished to see that they were exposed to the direct light, one even acting as a window blind.
We lingered long enough to get warmed through, and then left the hall and the Museum of Ancient Architecture, hailing a red 1.20 Y taxi at the first intersection.
With its somewhat out of the way siting and rather commonplace name, The Museum of Ancient Architecture has none of the pomp or international status of the nearby Temple of Heaven, Tain Tan, but is worth a visit, perhaps in warmer weather. A final thought.... it has just dawned on us that Grey County hosts the Ontario plowing match this year. The committee might well want to consult the spirit of Emperor Qianlong or his successors, as to just how such a ceremony is carried out.
See photos of the Altar of Agriculture and Museum of Ancient Architecture.
Our sightseeing excursions to Beijing have been very leisurely over the past months. Because we were here in 2002, and part of a tour which made sure that we saw all the most important sites, we’ve been able to chose the less well-known places for our visits. We’ve avoided the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven and so on, although we plan to see these again, we hope, in the company of friends and family who decide to visit us in the spring and summer.
Over Christmas week, we visited the Altar of Agriculture and Museum of Ancient Architecture, the name alone an enticement! Located west of the Temple of Heaven compound, which takes up a huge area in the southeast section of the city, the museum makes no claims to the public or casual passer by that it even exists. We were somewhat taken aback when the taxi driver stopped, saying we’d reached our destination. It was a narrow street lined with very old shops. There were few people around, and we hesitated after we got out of the car. However, the driver of our red taxi (base rate 10Y, and 1.20 per km thereafter) pointed straight ahead, and we saw a gate with signs which suggested that indeed, there was something important ahead.
We strolled into a garden area badly in need of a clean up, and eventually came to a ticket booth and a couple of attendants who directed us onward. One of the attendants had just finished hanging out her washing on the fence outside the booth. At 10:30 in the morning, we were the only 4 people around. We followed the signs and soon came to a large open area with a long single storey hall to our left and smaller buildings to our right. Straight ahead was a park like area with a large stone platform surrounded by a white marble balustrade, raised several steps above the ground. This structure was originally built of wood during the Ming dynasty in 1531 and then replaced with the permanent stone structure during the Qing dynasty in 1754 by the very busy Emperor Qianlong, see our report on Chengde. This was the viewing platform from which the Ming and Qing courts could watch the Emperor in his heavily embroidered chrome yellow silk robes, plow the required number of furrows and then plant the seeds which showed that he had some idea of agriculture and was therefore acceptable to the agriculture gods, and worthy of good planting and harvests for the year. He then proceeded to watch his nobles do the same thing. This was the call to the peasants all over the country to undertake the farming work. Sir James Frazer of Golden Bough (1922) fame would have been happy to note the priest-king-fertility god function in action. The field where the plowing would have occurred - called the Land of One and Three-Tenth Mu -- is now part of a nursery school playground. Slides, swings, and teeter totters seemed to be the fruits of whatever plowing had happened recently!
On our way back to the large halls we had seen earlier, we explored a large open square along which ranged a series of stone altars with niches containing the names of various deities and ancestors. The altars were carved in familiar Chinese motifs of waves, water and mountains. We also passed a small stone building with three open arches, a silk burning furnace. Here the Emperor and nobles wrote prayers and messages on pieces of silk, which were then cast into the furnace to rise as smoke to the gods. To us this seemed an early form of e-mail, accustomed as we are to sending messages off into the ether! Was the Emperor anticipating the future?
There were four long low halls enclosing a very large courtyard paved with stone tiles, with a few ancient pine trees in one corner. Their exteriors had been carefully restored, painted in glowing colours to emphasize the elaborate brackets at the eaves. The tiled roofs were decorated with fabulous animals at each ridge, creating intriguing silhouettes against the winter sky.
As we entered the first hall, from nowhere a lady approached us for our tickets, and instructed us that we must view the buildings in a certain order. The halls themselves were dark, dingy and very cold – the dead cold of buildings which have felt no heat for a long time. And if their function was to show off their inherent architectural features, they for the most part missed the point, since someone had lowered all the ceilings with crating to accommodate lighting which wasn’t turned on! These buildings contained various artifacts, mostly models of types of ancient architecture -- the wooden bracketing system used in the highly decorative eaves of old buildings, the structure of pagodas, bridges, covered walkways. We noted the ancient Chinese architect’s inventiveness and total dependence on wood. The fact is that buildings with bracketed roof structures take lots and lots of wood! We wished our two architect friends George and Ken were with us, both to explain and to marvel at the models before us. The hall which outlined the development of Chinese architecture from caves and holes in the ground to the magnificent buildings of the later dynasties was so poorly lit that we could hardly read the signs explaining each of the displays. It was also very cold, and with our runny noses and hacking coughs, we decided not to stay long there.
A huge area of one of the halls was taken up with a model of Beijing in 1949. We looked down as a bird would on the city laid out before us. Ancient Imperial compounds, waterways and parks helped us get our bearings. We were reminded that in 1644, the Manchus divided Beijing into north and south cities, and ordered all other Chinese to live south of the Qian Men (gate). The Qian Men (gate) is just south of Tiananmen Square. As well, we could see that the more famous Temple of Heaven and Altar of Heaven were just a few blocks from this museum, which in ancient times would all have been part of the same extensive worship area.
As we entered the final hall, we felt warmth! We were bathed in light! There were other people here! In fact a tour guide with a small group of Japanese and a friendly guard who gave Ken permission to take photos. And what a wealth of objects was housed here! There was no information. However, we were excited by unbelievably complicated and baroque carved screens, desks, tables, shelves, imperial thrones, all jumbled together with no particular order, and all within easy reach, unprotected. The collection of porcelain was truly awesome, and the scroll paintings and calligraphy were exceptional. We were astonished to see that they were exposed to the direct light, one even acting as a window blind.
We lingered long enough to get warmed through, and then left the hall and the Museum of Ancient Architecture, hailing a red 1.20 Y taxi at the first intersection.
With its somewhat out of the way siting and rather commonplace name, The Museum of Ancient Architecture has none of the pomp or international status of the nearby Temple of Heaven, Tain Tan, but is worth a visit, perhaps in warmer weather. A final thought.... it has just dawned on us that Grey County hosts the Ontario plowing match this year. The committee might well want to consult the spirit of Emperor Qianlong or his successors, as to just how such a ceremony is carried out.
All text and photography © copyright Harkaway, 2003 - 2004
