Advertisement
Published: April 1st 2008
Edit Blog Post
Painstakingly Creating Beauty
Cloisonne basically involves bending tiny copper wires into shape, gluing them onto a copper vessel and then filling in the gaps with enamel. The results can be quite breathtaking. Or: We think there is a pattern here, but can’t quite put our finger on it (or, if you would like a more classical theme, On Shopping).
After the Great Wall, we went on our scheduled tour of the government-owned cloisonné factory and lunch. Becky, Pam and I had already begun to suspect that there was some kind of arrangement between the tour company and the government. Our first bit of evidence was that our van would always drop us off beyond the barriers that held out the plebs—a few words from our driver and guards would let us through. Then, our guide Michelle would tell us to wait, go to the ticket booth, come back with big, official-looking tickets and we would be waived in through a separate entrance. The last piece of evidence was that we had all kinds of planned shopping stops—the government-owned jade factory, the government-owned cloisonné factory and the government-owned silk factory. (The latter one was very cool, more on that later.) And, in the Forbidden City, when we wanted to buy tourist trinkets, we were steered to the "official" shop where everything seemed horribly expensive until I realized that the items for sale were
Before and After
Only after they are fired do these vessels show their real beauty. The one in front is the finished product. actual antiques, some of them from the Forbidden City itself. Each of the stops offered visitors an educational tour followed by a kind offer to help ease the traveller’s burden by lightening his or her wallet, in exchange for some valuable keepsakes (except for the museum shop, which offered calligraphy from a "nephew" of the last Emperor, a quiet unassuming guy that sat at a small table in front of huge sheets of paper and lots of brushes). On the previous day, our stop had been the Beijing Banner Jadeware City, where we upheld our implied bargain with the Chinese government by exchanging our US currency for a nice piece of jade for Becky (being a blue-collar guy, I declined the opportunity to have a member of the Imperial family
Our second stop in the exchange-your-base-currency-for-our-wonderful-items government-owned program was the Beijing Glorious Friendship Red Banner Harmonious Cloisonné Factory (not its actual name, which we don’t remember, but would you be surprised if that was its actual name?), where in exchange for an opportunity to lighten our wallet we agreed to take in an educational tour and get a free lunch. The making of cloisonné is fascinating to watch and
Exchange Opportunity
Each of these vessels represents an opportunity to exchange your weak dollars for an object of eternal beauty, courtesy of the Chinese government. very painstaking for those who actual bend tiny copper wires into various shapes all day long. The result is beautiful but horribly expensive and we declined the opportunity to spend part of Ian’s college fund. However, we managed to spend $100 on various gifts and got a great gift with purchase—a pair of cheap chopsticks. Which was right in line with the “free” lunch, prepared by a government-owned restaurant operating within the cloisonné-factory-cum-giftstore-writ-large BGFRBHCF (Beijing Glorious Friendship Red Banner Harmonious Cloisonné Factory). Let’s just say that except for the wait staff and our guide, mine was the only Chinese face in the place—always a bad sign in a Chinese restaurant in China.
Becky failed to mention in her post about the Great Wall that it was raining (at the base of the Wall) and snowing (at the top third of the Wall) and we were fairly wet and cold, even though we had dressed for the occasion. Ian fell asleep in the van on our way to our next stop, the Ming Tombs, so Pam stayed behind with him in the van. Becky and I were very tired also, so our visit to the Ming Tombs was fairly short.
Ming Tombs
Cavernous and empty. The tombs are not what I expected. For one, there were no terracotta soldiers (those are NOT part of the Ming Tombs, just one more stupid tourist moment—but to my defense, the materials at the hotel that discussed the Ming Tombs showed pictures of the terracotta soldiers, so maybe I am not the only one that operated under that particular misconception). Also, the tomb we visited (of the second to last Ming emperor, one of the few tombs completely opened) was both empty and cavernous. There were five rooms, forming something like a cross. The first was an anteroom and was empty. The second room contained three thrones, one for the Emperor and one each for the Empress and the head concubine (apparently it was unusual for any woman besides the Empress to be buried in one of the tombs, but this Empress had no children and the head concubine bore the Emperor a son). The room to the right contained a huge, empty slab with a small rectangular hole in it, which represented the connection to the Earth. The room to the left was closed to tourists. And the room in the back contained twenty nine red lacquer
Throne Room
In front of the thrones were giant Ming vases that were huge oil lamps, designed to burn forever. boxes, three of them humongous (the size of a stretched-out VW bug) that contained the three coffins and twenty six large boxes containing the treasure (each the size of a medium desk). All of that would have left me pretty underwhelmed, except that the rooms were incredibly tall—easily forty feet to the ceiling. I am not sure if the pictures can convey the feeling.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0338s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb