Country roadtrip

Last Sunday afternoon our family had the opportunity to go see the countryside outside Xi'an. We were driving on the South side of Xi'an near the QinLing (秦岭) mountain range. Driving along Highway S107 that parallels the mountain range we saw an old looking pagoda at the base of the mountains. Having seen lots of pagodas it didn't look like anything special, but Ashley and I both felt a strong interest to go and check it out anyway. 

We told our driver to drive over to the pagoda which ended up being a challenge. We found a small country road to turn off onto from the main highway. We drove for about half a mile passing kiwi and grape vineyards and farmers driving rudimentary vehicles. We ended up at a small farmers village near the pagoda. The village looked like it had been frozen in time from a few hundred years ago. People were drying fruits and vegetables (ie corn) on the side of the road. Buildings were all made of brick with some of them being abandoned. Everyone was poor, we saw only one car in the entire village. Our driver drove through a maze of small alleys wide enough for one vehicle making our way up the hill.

We approached the top of the village where we saw the pagoda across the farm fields about a few hundred yards away. As we got out of the car villagers started coming out of their homes curious to find out who we were. Ashley and I started taking pictures of the pagoda and surroundings while the kids stayed in the car. A lady in her 60s came out of the field with some freshly picked crops and farm tools in hand. I was curious about the history of the pagoda and asked her how old it was. She shrugged and said it was old and abandoned and no one knew how old it really was. Looking around at the surroundings we saw an unorthodox looking church with crosses on the outside along with a gold Taoist temple off in the distance.

Move forward to today, less than a week from this day trip. I'm working on a talk for Hailey's baptism. Being in China, I was thinking it would be cool to incorporate a little bit of Christianity's history in China into the talk and found some interesting tidbits. Turns out the first documentation of Christianity in China can be found on a stone tablet from the 8th century known as the Nestorian Stele. This stone tablet documented the first 150 years of Christianity in China. It states that the first missionary to China were Alopen and his fellow Syraic missionaries which came from the Roman Empire and established a place of worship in Xi'an during the Tang Dynasty (635 AD). It includes a cross and text that refers to Genesis, baptism, Sunday, and the cross. When the Tang Dynasty fell in the early 10th century, the tablet was buried. In the 17th century the Nestorian Stele was rediscovered and the local Chinese were surprised to find that the "new" Christian religion that was being preached in China at the time was actually introduced more than 1,000 years earlier. This stone tablet is found today in the Xi'an Beilin Museum ust a few minutes from our home. 

Digging a little deeper, I discovered that one of the places of worship for the early Nestorian Christian church was most likely the Daqin Pagoda (大秦塔) that we saw last Sunday. (Finally figured out the name of it today!)  It was supposedly built in 640 AD and is a seven-story octagonal brick pagoda about 32 meters high. Over the years it was a church and then a monastery. Inside it includes depictions of Jonah at Nineveh, a nativity scene showing the birth of Christ, and Syriac graffiti (early Christian missionaries were from Syria). Other evidence the building was a church is the fact that it faces East. (Buddhist and Taoist temples and graves always face South or North.) 

We were blown away that the little pagoda we saw last week could quite possibly be the oldest Christian church in China. We knew that Xi'an had lots of history, who would have thought it had that much Christian history? We want to go back to the pagoda to get a closer look and also go see the Beilin Forest Museum to check out the Nestorian Stele stone tablet.  I've included links throughout the text if you are interested in learning more. 

Birthplace of Taoism

Christian church

Daqin Temple

Daqin temple on the right, another 

church on the left.

Jing Ye Si

We spent our Saturday afternoon hiking up a mountain to a Buddhist temple called Jing Ye Si. The hike was paved with  stone stairs and there was a railing so we didn't have any accidents this hiking trip. The kids were troopers and the scenery was breath taking.
The e trees are starting to change colors and there is a slight nip in the air. I miss the smell of fall, i.e. pumpkin spice, wood burning stoves and apple pie, but it's nice to have a little taste of fall weather.
A short drive from the temple was a huge Buddhist statue.  We weren't sure if we could hike up to it and we were tired, so we took a picture of the statue from the road.

Mahjong

Every afternoon the sound of hail hitting tin roofs echoes through the park. as people gather together to play Mahjong, a Chinese game. Chairs, tables and mahjong setsare available for rent from a business in the park
Mahjong is a four player game of chance, skill, and strategy. The game is played with 144 tiles with Chinese characters written on them. The four players take turns picking thirteen tiles. In turn the players discard the tiles until they form a legal hand which consists of four groups and a pair. There are rules stating pieces can be stolen and exchanged by the players.

Learning Chinese

I am a visual learner which means that I learn ideas, data and concepts through images. While the Chinese use characters, they also use pin yin which is using the greek alphabet to represent Chinese sounds.
For example the following alphabet letters on the right make the following sounds:
e-uh
i-ee
ai-I
ei-A
ao-ou
ou-o
an-ohn
en-un
ang-ahn
eng-ung
ong-on
ia-ya  
ie-yeah
iao-yeou
iou-you
ian-yen
in-een
iang-eean
ing-eeng
iong-eon
ua-waah
uo-ouu
uei-way
uan-youan
uen- uhn
uang-youan
ueng-youun
ue- wou
uan-youan
un-uhn
j-gee
q-ce
x-she
zh-zer
ch-cher
sh-sher

Then you add four different tones to these sounds and it gets really crazy. First tone is a neutral tone represented by a straight line - second tone goes up represented by / third tone goes down then up V and fourth tone goes down \.

I have had a few missteps with my language skills. To say bag is diazi and to say child is haizi. I wanted to ask someone for a bag: gei wo ye ge diazi and instead I said gei wo ye ge haizi, meaning give me a child. Needless to say the person looked confused.

Another time my daughter was teaching me to say hi my name is the word for name is jaizo said with a second tone and the word for foot is jaizo said with the third tone. So I said hi my foot is Ashley. It was pretty silly but it's teaching my kids to laugh at ourselves and our silly mistakes.

Miniature Terracotta Warriors Hanyangling, China

On the outskirts of Xian, in the "small" city of Xianyang is a museum housing miniature terracotta warriors that are about 18 inches in size. The warriors were excavated from Yangjiawan Village, Xianyang, City.

These warriors were built for Emperor Jingdi, the fourth emperor of the Han dynasty who lived from 188-141 BC. He ruled using principles of Taoism and did a lot to lower taxes and increase the living standards of his people. He had miniature warriors made for his burial tomb instead of life size warriors because they were cheaper and easier to make. The museum housed not only 50,000 miniature terracotta warriors, but a collection of bronze statues and artifacts, jade artifacts and original stone writings from the Han dynasty.

                                            People during the Han dynasty believed that
                                            burying jade with a corpse would keep it from
                                             rotting and would bring prosperity. Thus, bodies
                                        were buried with jade swine or cicada statues in their hands.

Chimes

Remains of an outer and inner

coffin from the Han dynasty.

                                                          Writings from the Han dynasty

                                                                 Bronze pot

                                                                   Gold coins

.

Shaanxi Opera Garden

Chinese Opera is a Chinese cultural icon and the Shaanxi Provence has been a hot bed for opera since the Jin dynasty (1115-1234 AD). 3,000 Chinese opera stages of different shapes and sizes are scattered throughout Shaanxi Provence. This makes up 80% of all opera houses in China.

The East garden of the Wild Goose Pagoda is also known as the Shaanxi Opera Garden. It has colorful statues depicting famous operas, actors,  and large frescos of Chinese opera masks. 

The park itself was small, the right size to keep our kids interested and  we had fun looking at the different statues.

I love these lamp posts.