Nan Yue Mausoleum

This is another really well set up site for public visiting. This is the top of the mausoleum, so what you see is the roof. Above is a steel & glass pyramid that is approximately congruent with the hill that has been removed to ge to the tomb. So it's still possible to get a feeling from outside of how this hill fitted into the surrounding landscape. It's also possible to go down into the mausoleum itself, which is smallish, but with seven rooms (Tutankanem only had four, if there is any point in the comparison).

The contents have been put into an adjoining museum - whose architect must have had a fair sense of humour because the museum has both its own "Louvre-like" pyramid, repeating the theme of this one here, and "Egyptian-esque" external bas-reliefs. So far as i know, any connection with Egypt is coincidence, so I guess the museum design might be a tad tendentious. Still, it made me smile. Possibly another coincidence is the vast amount of Egyptian artiface looted by the french under Napoleon - so the Louvre reference is also apposite.

What a fantastic thing archaeology is. (Probably not the world's easiest career though.) The Nan Yue mausoleum is one of 2 Nan Yue sites in Guangzhou, the other being the palace which I mentioned elsewhere. The mausoleum is, so far as anybody knows anyway, a vastly simpler site. Just one mausoleum, nothing before, nothing after. When you think of the amount of pillaging of tombs that went on in, say, Egypt, and I assume in parts of China too although I haven't researched that yet, it's extraordinary that this one was excavated completely untouched in 1983. I mean there it was, a bloody great mound sitting in the middle of the suburbs, untouched for 2000+ years. No legends of buried treasure? No idle curiosity?

In the nineteenth century somebody built gun emplacements on one side of it, and no accidental discoveries.

Along comes another developer, starts digging up the hill to build an apartment block and suddenly, there it is. Imagine how unbelievably excited the archaeology department must have been. It's a small site, but it is really really interesting. Actually small sites are better in some ways for the tourist; you don't get quite the same feeling of scratching the surface (of course you are, but feelings do count). I've been back once since the first visit, and I'll probably go back another couple of times. I get museum burnout because there's really too much to think about & since I don't really know exactly what to look for/at, it can be a bit confusing. I think museums generally do a lousy job of providing supporting information & context. This one actually tries pretty hard, but my museum Chinese is, well, underdeveloped.

I can't claim to be such a great artifact photographer - it's a "no flash" museum as well, but here are a couple of my favourite things.

This chap was holding up the base of one section of a massive seven-part Chinese screen. If you can get a screen-sized view of it, he has a fine demonic grin and vicious teeth. He doesn't look remotely like anything I associate with "Chinese" - which I freely admit may be ignorance on my part - I would have guessed Central American.

Or alternatively, an early prototype for a computer game.




This "rhyton" is much more stunning than the photograph - the jade is translucent, and amazingly thin. I've seen a lot of jade in China, and frankly I'm starting to think that plastic is rarer and more intersting, but this restores jade to its proper place in the preciousness scheme of things. It's a piece that makes me start to understand the evil collector mentality - wanting it is very easy.

Drinking horns always make me think of Norse gods (Thor in particular, drinking the ocean to create the tides) and the chosen translation into Greek makes it hard to avoid thinking westwards, but of course, anybody hanging around with horned animals is highly likely to work out that the horns make good cups. And Guangzhou is, don't forget, the city of five sheep/rams/goats. So, no jumping to conclusions.




This is another of those things - again I don't know how clearly you can see the picture, but the carving is very finely detailed. There's a dragon, a phoenix & a rhinoceros in there if you look hard enough. It's a clasp, somewhat more elaborate than the hooks-and-eyes of the pre-velcro cheap fastener.

One of the small things that I liked about it is that it had been broken and mended in its original lifetime; so he may have been the Nan Yue emperor, but he wasn't a nothing-that-isn't-perfect-enters-my-sight kind of emperor. More frugal. Better balanced. Perhaps not quite so rich.

Calling him an Emperor is something of an ambit claim, in point of fact. I have also seen him described as a governor. Certainly his grandfather started off in the South as the governor of the Qin empire - but Qin didn't last long & in the time it took the Han dynasty to get itself organised the Qin-colonised Yue areas naturally acquired a degreee of independence. And from the Han dynasty point of view, an independent kingdom of Han ethnic stock in the South wasn't a high priority, so long as they weren't too independent. So it made sense for them to authorise/collaborate in the Nan Yue kingdom. Of course, eventually all that independence and talikng about kingdoms got the local people unduly excited, and the Han acquired an emperor whose idea of control was more focussed on physical control, and thus after 4 generations (and in a pragmatic sense 3, because the last generation of infant emperor probably wasn't more than a dying optimistic gasp) the Nan Yue kingdom was no more. (But see the history of Vietnam for an alternative view of events)

Zhaoqing

Zhaoqing is a very cool place. Its practically mandatory to go somewhere during the national holiday, being me we left it to the last minute, but settled on the popular destination , the poor man's Guilin, Zhaoqing. As the poet apparently said, take some water from West Lake [famous, in Hangzhou] and seven crags from Yangshuo [famous, near Guilin] and voila, it's the Seven Crags of Zhaoqing.

Here are a lot of other people going somewhere during the national holiday. This is the long-distance waiting room (#4) at Guangzhou East.

Carefully framed as this is (by the ferry window on the right) it might just be Guilin. 


But although this seems to be all that Zhaoqing is famous for in Guangzhou, when you get there there is a lot more.

We were fiendishly lucky to get a hotel room, in fact. The city was so busy with tourists that even the local taxi drivers, usually commission hounds when it comes to finding you a hotel, were refusing to cooperate. We got the last room in the place we stayed & while I was filling out the forms about 5 more people got knocked back.

But the good luck with the room meant that we were going to like Zhaoqing, and we found a lot to like. This is the South Gate of the old city in a city wall which is not completely synthetic - in fact looks pretty old in places. Of course questions of authenticity abound in tourism, and in some ways, who does care if it's real or a copy, apart from the archaeologist? I mean, I do, but I'm not really sure why, or that the reasons are readily defensible.

There has been a city here since Han times (BCE), but I guess the wall here is Qing/Ming fragments. During that time Zhaoqing was the main provincial city (governor's seat) so I expect the facilities would have been well maintained. Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit who opened China to Western intellectual eyes, was here for 6 years learning Chinese. And architecting a church. Very talented man.

This is actually the outer gate & we tried to get up to the inner gate but the space between the two is filled by a large hospital. Despite our best attempts we weren't quite able to navigate through the hospital to the next gate - we could see it, but we couldn't climb up to it.

Another thing I liked about Zhaoqing is that the Pearl River - actually maybe it is the West River - is still a working river here. For someone who has spent about 200 hours of his life in boats, and most of that in the 168 hours of one week, I am a complete sucker for boats. I love them, or at least, the idea of them. I don't have one becasue I doubt I would ever actually use it (I know the difference between fantasy and reality) but I still like to watch other people using them. 

In fact Liz and I spent days trying to find how to get to Zhaoqing by boat & one of the reasons the trip was a bit disorganised was the amount of time we spent looking for boats instead of booking hotels. It was nice to see the boats, even if they have stopped running from Guangzhou. (In fact, it appears that the boats now go from Huangpu, about 30 km south of Guangzhou to Gaoming, about 30 kms by bus from Zhaoqing.) I did in fact try to find out form a couple of girls hanging around the river's edge if there were ferries from Zhaoqing, but they thought not. Although they weren't thinking completely clearly because they were trying to photograph me clandestinely with their mobile phone and I scared one of the witless by walking towards her. And she spoke riverboat putonghua, which I didn't study in school.

This is a photo from the window of the hotel, the Shanshui or 'mountain & water' chain. This part of China, and in fact all the way from here to Shanghai if you stick within a couple of hundred kilometers of the coast, could not be better described. 

We just had time on the last morning to dash back down to the river to look at somebody's mansion - nice enough in itself - which contained more revolutionary history: one of the divisions of the armies involved in the Northern Expedition(s) set off from here. But the other half of the mansion was deveoted to a museum of inkstones, which are a local handicraft, produced from the nearby mountains. Inkstones are a new product for the wealthy middle class demonstrating its connection with China's traditions - but nonetheless some of these inkstones were superbly carved. Not really practical for me to bring home, so I was compelled to leave them all there. And the camera broke down, so no pictures either. 

Wholesale clothing markets

I was busy trying out the video on the camera & I didn't get any stills (these are the best of the 1st shots from the videos). I've cobbled together a HOME MOVIE with the clips, but I haven't quite worked out how to show it off to the world, yet. Give me time.

Anyway, these stills don't really catch the feeling of this place. This street runs down between the Wan Tong retail & wholesale markets and the I-have-no-idea shoe market. These are the markets I but stuff at - not that there aren't plenty of other markets but I'm not sure there is enough time for me to become an expert in these places. So for now, anyway, these are they. There are more people here than you could possibly work out what to do with. Ok, there are more people in Indian markets. But so what?
There are also belt markets and watch markets and cuff link markets and wallet markets and probably earring markets and underwear markets, as well as underground markets, handbag markets, just stuff markets everywhere. And there are the people selling stuff, making stuff, buying stuff wholesale, buying it retail, carrying the stuff from one place to another, looking at stuff, feeding the people doing stuff with the stuff, and other people watching the stuff happening.

Somehow these three photgraphs don't seem to have the right amount of stuff in them. Hence the still not available video, which will give you a bit better idea.


What really interests me about this place, and all the other markets, is that they are a kind of education in economics and commerce. For a start, imagine that you can see the entire fashion industry of Australia - 20 million people - in one place. You start to get an idea that there's a lot going on behind the boutiques that you don't see. Then you realise that actually, in Guangzhou you are looking at the fashion industry of Australia, plus a large chunk of the rest of the developed world, and it's a bit headspinning. I find myself wanting to look at some statistics - how many people? How many pairs of jeans/shoes/ear rings/etc/etc to which parts of the world? What's it all worth? It's also a bit of a grim confession, but having been here in 1990, and comparing it with now, I have to confess that I am developing a lot of respect for the free market economists. Here, now, you can see it & it might be a bit intimidating - although I guess if you know your business it isn't - but it's undeniably a better way.

The other thing that strikes me, is that actually, this is the history of Gunagzhou. It has been the intersection of China with the rest of the world, and the intersection of Chinese trade with the rest of the world for a long time. Not the only intersection, as there were the silk roads, but absolutely the maritime intersection. It was the frustration of only being able to do business in Guangzhou that drove the British into some of their least savoury post-colonial manouvres. And there has been trade between Canton and South East Asia for at least 2000 years. The Arabs knew Canton in the 8th century. The Chinese from Canton were trading with India along the coastal routes at least 1400 years ago. So when I stand in Beijing and look at a heavily restored 18th century palace, I'm not sure that perhaps I'm seeing as much history as I do standing outside a market in Guangzhou. That market, barring minor interruptions, has been in continuous existence since BCE.

It's a thrill to hold a Byzantine coin and feel that you are directly connected to something 1200 years old. But that coin is dead. If you buy something in the markets of Guangzhou you can participate in something 200o years old. It's not an artefact. It's special.

Da Sha Tou and the ferry that wasn't

I like Da Sha Tou. It has the fabric markets, the camera markets & a lot of trees. It used to have the wharf for the overnight ferries up and down river as well, so being big fans of ferries and following our trusty, if somewhat dated, guidebook we set out to find it.

Optimism tempered with fatalism was the mood - none of the locals, including the real natives of the city, that I work with believes such a thing as an inter-city ferry exists. But Liz & I know from experience that the lcoals don't always know everything - in Hangzhou in 1999 we had to find the actual riverside wharf to catch the ferry up the Grand Canal, no-one knew about that either. On the other hand, in Harbin in 2002 we had to hire our own boat to make a trip down the river.

We started well, with a very crowded looking ferry office - but they only sold "up and down the river" cruises. They also told us there were no more ferries, and helpfully gave us instructions to the bus station. The bus station told us that the bus we wanted didn't go from there, and helpfully provided what I am convinced was a random number - since no matter how bad my pronunciation is, I refuse to accept that our destination could possibly have been interpreted as one of the Number 57 bus stops.

Er Sha Dong
Xing Hai Yin Yue Ting
Da Sha Tou
Zhu Hai Guang Chang
Ai Qun Da ?
Shi Zhong Yi Yuan
Hua Di
Shi Wei Tang
Qiao Dong Xiao Qu
Zhao Kou Ke Yun Zhan

I ask you, which of those could really be taken for Zhao Qing?

Of course, the fault was to a degree mine, because I don't speak Cantonese & have made about as much progress with it as I have effort put into it (one new language at a time is enough for me), and the bulk of the conversation seemed to me to be in not Mandarin. So maybe I misunderstood some critical piece of information. It wouldn't be the first time that I have discovered an unhelpful local was actually an incompetent listener (me). It's very tempting to blame everybody else.

Anyway, the last stop on that bus route does actually take you to a ferry. One day I will catch that bus and find out where the ferry goes to. Not Zhaoqing though, because I am now convinced there isn't one. The reason that I am convinced is that I have discovered why there is no ferry, and it is a combination of 2 extremely plausible reasons. Firstly, people have been building roads, and roads are faster. That is the history of the world, so no reason why it shouldn't be here either. Secondly, there's a Chinese government department responsible for creating business opportuniteis for the locals - basically something I am in sympathy with - and one of theri favourite tricks is creating transportation needs. As for example at Huashan in Xi'an, where a perfectly good train station at the foot of the mountain has been closed in favour of the next station down the line, thus creating a need for taxis & minibuses. The Guangzhou-Zhaoqing ferry (formerly convenient, if not very fast) is now the Huangpu-Gaoming ferry. Huangpu is a one hour bus trip out of Guangzhou & Gaoming is at least an hour on the bus out of Zhaoqing. Sadly, these market creating activities have caused the ferry to vanish in any meaningful way.

I wonder if it's worth it to bring it back just for the tourist market? I can't be the only person that loves riverboats.

Anyway, getting back to the mainline, we set off to walk down the riverbank and visit every possible wharf. This we did & sadly, found only blisters. And a ferry that crosses the river to the other side - well that's not nothing.

We also found where the police boats park, and possibly where the police boatmen live. It's a little bit run down, and I guess it's so close to the water that it is rat infested, but the block of flats adjacent to the police wharf is potentially the best address in Guangzhou (well, no-one else has a private pier). You might feel the need to move the coconut sellers along - it's nice to see a police station that feels so openly comfortable allying itself to free-floating commerce, but the left-over husks aren't pretty.

This turned out to be a day when we were doomed to walk. Finding a taxi is a bit of a challenge a lot of the time & you have to position yourself very strategically close to where people debouch from taxis and then, fend off other competitors for the newly vacant cab. usually missing a couple of cans gives you enouh information to adjust the game plan but on this particular day, nothing was working. We must have walked another 3 km before we finally commandeered one on the edge of the art district.

It's the grand final

Expatriate rites of passage - watching the grand final in an Irish bar, complete with sullen Geelong supporters. Free beer from the publican - nice of him really since I won't be back next year.

Anyway the right team won, from my point of view, and it was a fantastic game for 2 and a 1/2 quarters.

I had to take the afternoon off work on the basis of an Australian religious event.

Liz in Shenzhen

I've been in Shenzhen about 17 or 18 times and the consensus of all, local and foreign alike, is that it is a city without a history. In a way that's true - like Shanghai, Shenzhen is what it is now because of trade with Hong Kong in the last 30 years. But in another way it's not true because people have been living in and around the area for a long time, just not in big cities. I had to work on the Friday we after we arrived in Shenzhen and Liz spent the day on the internet researching the city, and came up with a list of about 20 things to look at - from Neolithic villages to tombs of ancient kings. Stay tuned. There is a bit of southern pride reverberating through Guangdong, justifiably so since it was peripheral to the various Northern empires for substantial amounts of its history; not perhaps enough to call itself another country, but certainly enough to want to mark the distinctions between Han and Yue.



We haven't visited those sites though. We only really had time to stop off at Windows on the World. I'm cowering because the sun is in my eyes, not because a giant kangaroo eater is approaching the giant kangaroos.

I don't think I can describe Windows on the World. On the right behind me is the Parthenon. Behind that is the Eiffel Tower. The Golden Gate Bridge is being build across the road to my left front - the smaller kangaroo is looking at it. I think you can take it from there.

Around and about

Liz arrived last week on Thursday & I flew down to Hong Kong to meet her. I was flying from Shanghai and I had hoped to catch the Mag-lev (400+ km/p/h) but it doesn't run until 7:30 and I was on an 8 am international flight. So bugger. Maybe next time.

The new airport in Hong Kong - well, new to me - is not at all spectacular, but I'm sure it's a lot less hellish for the locals in Kowloon who used to live next to the old one. Apart from being expensive, the public transport access from Lantau to Central is fantastic. In fact, it's a pretty fair model of the perfect airport-city combination.

I was in Hong Kong in 1990 but I spent 3 days confined to a hotel room so most of what I remember is actually from 1975, when I wasn't paying a lot of attention. In 1975 Central was full of expensive shops. In 2008 Central is full of very expensive shops. The tall buildings above the expensive shops have changed - they are taller and shinier, but you know, tall shiny buildings are just tall shiny buildings. There's a Leunig cartoon from the 70's in which all the building reflect each other's reflections so they just disappear.

It's possible to walk around Central without ever actually going outside - walkways link most of the buildings. There's two possible explanations for this - architects are all geeks who grew up watching/reading dystopic science fiction, or it's a good idea never to be outside. You can choose.

It's not so easy to decide where to meet in a city you don't know - one of the landmark hotels I thought of actually has vanished - especially when the transport is not completely reliable. We decided to meet at St John's Cathedral - fairly easy to check that there was only one of those. So it proved to be, and we met there on the first attempt. (The cathedral may still be in the same place, but someone has managed to build a shopping mall underneath it while no-one was looking)

It's a short walk to the Peak tram from St John's, so we went there. It's very steep - it is so steep in fact that it gave me the chance to use the word vertiginous in conversation - another lifetime ambition realised. The tram terminates in a shopping mall, which makes it another typical piece of Asian public transport, but to be honest, it would be a great thing to live on the Peak. There are a lot of trees, and a fine view. I presume it costs an arm & a couple of legs to do it, but to get off at one of the intermediate stations - Macdonnell, say - and wend your way home across the mountain would be a fine way to end the day. On a par with catching the ferry home to Balmain.
Hong Kong is a complicated place. Central & the rest of the island generally are rich & polished. There are obviously a lot of extremely rich people there. Kowloon-side the shops are smaller, the building older and the streets are more crowded. If you go out to the outer edges, then the whole place starts to look seriously run down. It's hard to believe that there aren't a lot of extremely poor people as well - in 1976 they were made visible in the form of a very large shanty-town; the sort of slum where everybody lives under their own bit of corrugated iron, but no-one has any walls. I didn't go looking for it this time, and I hear it's been moved on.

Anyway, we got down from the peak and it was time to move to Shenzhen - we tried to catch a ferry up the Pearl river, but the ferry terminal has been converted to a shopping mall and we ended up on the MTR (which has taken over the KLR, the line that runs up to the border). Nothing much to say about that trip, except a tip for young players - don't assume that because Tsim Sha Shui & East Tsim Sha Shui have similar names and a connecting tunnel you can easily walk there. Better to catch the train at one and zig-zag via the connecting station (which we didn't do, so I can't tell you the name). Still, it wouldn't be Hong Kong without a trip on one ferry, the Star from Central to Kowloon. Unlike every other form of transport in HK, it's ridiculously cheap. I guess it's subsidised to allow the workers a cheap way to get over from poortown to richville.

Since then it's been mainly work. More later.