We are enjoying our holiday very much but I must confess a note of disappointment. Whilst I do feel privileged to be able to say that I've seen the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City and the Terracotta warriors, the reality is that we have been overexposed to images of these monuments well before we got to China and this has a number of unfortunate consequences. The site of the Terracotta warriors, for example, is much smaller that we were expecting.
It is big and in an aircraft hanger of a building but, all the photographs of the site are taken through fish eye lenses making it appear to be vast. This isn't helped by the fact that before you arrive at the site you've been through at least 4 or 5 shops trying to sell you full scale terracotta warriors for your garden. Similarly, the Forbidden City is constantly around you on billboards and on TV as virtual fly-throughs. I've seen the Forbidden City sell everything from the Olympic Games to Toothpaste and so arriving there seems like a strangely unreal experience – like being inside a virtual reality simulation which has, unfortunately, been filled with American tourists.
There are moments of revelation though. For example you get glimpses of the surprisingly modest domestic living quarters of the emperor in the Forbidden City.
Under a hastily arranged tarpaulin you get a glimpse of the basic equipment being used by the archaeologists of the Terracotta Warriors as they toil (presumably through the night) to uncover and reconstruct each and every pottery man. 
In the Xi'an museum I caught site of a model which, for a moment, connected me with what it might have been like to be a 19th century explorer arriving in China for the first time. The model was of an Emperors carriage. The carriage looked as if it had arrived from an alien planet with a domed roof set low over a wide wheel based flying saucer. This is the stuff of fantasy novels and to the un-expecting eye would have been a very strange site.
I'm pleased to say they the alieness has continued into our boat tour of the Li River. Even though this landscape must be one of the most photographed in the world the thing about natural landscapes is that they remain elusive and impossible to fully capture. In England (particularly my part of England) we are used to a modest sort of landscape which rolls around gently eroding and softening in a quite understated way. Not so here the hills are vertical cliff faces protruding out of the ground into monolithic mounts which loom out of the mist. This is the site you would expect to see when visiting middle earth – a truly alien experience.
It is big and in an aircraft hanger of a building but, all the photographs of the site are taken through fish eye lenses making it appear to be vast. This isn't helped by the fact that before you arrive at the site you've been through at least 4 or 5 shops trying to sell you full scale terracotta warriors for your garden. Similarly, the Forbidden City is constantly around you on billboards and on TV as virtual fly-throughs. I've seen the Forbidden City sell everything from the Olympic Games to Toothpaste and so arriving there seems like a strangely unreal experience – like being inside a virtual reality simulation which has, unfortunately, been filled with American tourists.There are moments of revelation though. For example you get glimpses of the surprisingly modest domestic living quarters of the emperor in the Forbidden City.
Under a hastily arranged tarpaulin you get a glimpse of the basic equipment being used by the archaeologists of the Terracotta Warriors as they toil (presumably through the night) to uncover and reconstruct each and every pottery man. In the Xi'an museum I caught site of a model which, for a moment, connected me with what it might have been like to be a 19th century explorer arriving in China for the first time. The model was of an Emperors carriage. The carriage looked as if it had arrived from an alien planet with a domed roof set low over a wide wheel based flying saucer. This is the stuff of fantasy novels and to the un-expecting eye would have been a very strange site.I'm pleased to say they the alieness has continued into our boat tour of the Li River. Even though this landscape must be one of the most photographed in the world the thing about natural landscapes is that they remain elusive and impossible to fully capture. In England (particularly my part of England) we are used to a modest sort of landscape which rolls around gently eroding and softening in a quite understated way. Not so here the hills are vertical cliff faces protruding out of the ground into monolithic mounts which loom out of the mist. This is the site you would expect to see when visiting middle earth – a truly alien experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment