Microcosm

For a final day in Fuzhou, a visit to the fabled Hakka 土楼 tulou, villages built as square or cylindrical fortresses. It feels like a village rolled up and folded in on itself, but also like a proto-apartment building, or even something from a sci-fi movie. In this late 19th century one, 怀远楼 Huaiyuan, four layers of small rooms with tiny windows are arrayed around an inner ring, creating a corridor of market stalls on its outside, and an open ring of kitchens on the inside - no plumbing in the rooms! Inside that is a temple/classroom. Other tulou have different, bigger or smaller constructions inside, and some are still inhabited. As a solution to a design problem, they're brilliant and evocative. To live in, perhaps a little too panoptical for me!

Emporium

Apologies for radio silence! We had three full wonderful days in 泉州 Quanzhou, a bustling southern city which proved the perfect complement to the natural wonders of Wuyi. A UNESCO world heritage site, "Emporium of the World in Song0Yuan China" described sometimes as a "museum of world religions," Quanzhou - known to the world as Zaytun - was the main port of the maritime Silk Road, a cosmopolitan trading hub with communities from as far away as the Levant. 

During its peak there may have been as many as six mosques here - the 11th century shell of one, modeled on a mosque in Damascus, is a major site (you can see it just beneath the first of the two pagodas at right above) and an inspiration for an architecture of peaked arches. Beyond Buddhists and Daoists galore, there were also Christians, many Nestorian, and even a Hindu community, 300 pieces of whose temple - the only one known in China - have been excavated in recent decades. A splendid museum celebrates the way these traditions influenced each other, the city's inclusive spirit - and the virtues of trade.

Perhaps most thrilling for a scholar of religion is what's described as the only Manichaean temple in the world, though it's apparently been flying under the radar as a Buddhist temple, and is operating as such today too. Someone's left a big stack of spirit money for burning here, and another was busily throwing augury rocks on the floor for guidance. Much more anon - I have seven hours on a train day after tomorrow - but for now here's a centenarian Chinese banyan near where we stayed, one of many marvelous trees.

Woo-ee!

If floating through the cliffs of Wuyishan on a raft was fun, actually walking around, over and under (!) them and the forests and tea farms wrapped around them is another experience again! Quick selection of pictures, with commentary in a few days...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

九曲

We came to Wuyishan prepared. The Shanghai Museum East displayed the whole length of a four century old scroll painting of the famous "nine bends," a sandstone landscape full of gnarly scholars' stone-like mountains full of temples and travelers. Nothing could really look this loopy, surely? But I wanted to confirm! 

This scene near the start is the closest I managed to correlation of what we saw and what the painter depicted. Not too much of a stretch! 

I'll let some other scenes of the two-hour journey speak for themselves...

And so it goes...

Toward Wuyishan

Started the day in Quzhou, home of the Southern School of Confucianism and full of new construction as it's about to be connected to the high speed rail system. The family temple (the 75th generation descendant died in 2021), branded as a sacred site, had signs only in Chinese except for some old trees, like these ginkgoes, 

apparently 502 years old when this tourist site was completed three years ago. I don't know if the two youngsters growing in the third bed are allowed because their elder lost its crown. From there it was into (sometimes literally through) the mountains to our south, many fluffy with the tassel-like tufts of bamboo forests, but impressive numbers of young pines too, our destination the Seussian splendors of Wuyi.

出发

 

Our road trip to Fujian begins!

Gentlemanly pursuits

For my second Shanghai day, I checked out the newly open Shanghai Museum East, a home for their impressive collection of Chinese art.

Too much to take in in one visit! But here's a taste, Yuan dynasty master 倪瓒 Zi Nan's "六君子图轴 (Six Gentlemen)." Yes, the gentlemen, in seclusion from the turmoil of politics and foreign occupation, are trees - and remarkably ungnarled compared to most trees in the paintings gallery... Surrounded by the seals and poems of centuries of other gentlemen, they've surged into the cameras and smart phones of countless thousands more, including mine!

文明礼让

Back in Shanghai, for the first time in five years! Much has changed, I'm sure, but I'm happy to discover old friends, like these (now a little faded) characters on the subway platform glass walls (which New York will soon need to build to ensure nobody ends up on the tracks). They still urge 文明礼让 civility and courtesy, to little avail... 

I took the subway to another old friend, the Shanghai Natural History Museum 上海自然博物馆, this time of course attentive to trees but swept away again by its mainly animal-focused 生命长河 "river of life" which reunites living and extinct, marine and land animals. As before, I found a profoundly different understanding of time and contingency.

My Chinese is back too, if very rusty. Let me try my own translation of this: 死亡，是地铁上所有生命必然的归宿。诞生，对生命来说究竟是必然还是偶然？ Death is the final home to which all earthly life inevitably returns. From life's view is birth then inevitable or accidental? The most prominently featured trees were petrified!

SAN --> LAX --> PVG

On my way back to China - first time in five years! VPN willing, I'll keep you posted on new discoveries and rediscoveries.

Le(tting)go

The old Lego which gladdened the hearts of two generations until winding up color-sorted in my parents' garage are on their way to new adventures. 

We took them today to a thrift shop where, we hope, they'll introduce a whole new series of kids to the endless possibilities of original Lego. 

If my heart is heavy, it's because it's full!