I was very lucky to be invited by the Tongcheng Travel company of Suzhou to take part in a trip to Xuzhou which is about 2 ½ hours north of Suzhou when you travel on the high speed train. A very good friend of mine comes from here and she has always told me how good the food is from this part of China and to be honest it did not disappoint, we had so much to choose from and there was an array of food on offer.
I met the rest of the group at the station and my translator for the duration was Ning, a lovely girl who just happens to be married to a Scotsman and so she had little trouble understanding me, although her husband does come from Edinburgh but the less said about that the better I think.
Xuzhou was hot, really hot, but at least the humidity was lower than Suzhou. Leaving the relative comfort of the station to cross the concourse to the bus made me think that this is how an egg must feel when dropped into a frying pan, it was blistering. The bus was cool and so once the door was closed we headed off to our first port of call which was the Tomb of the Chu King (Liu Wu), Zhulin Temple
The detail on the figures and the amount of effort that was put into making this tomb and all the artefacts is incredible. When you enter the tomb on the right hand corridor you are immediately aware of the scale of this place. This tomb has been carved out of very hard rock and you can see all the cuts made by the tools. There are details on the roof as well as the walls. It’s a complete underground palace with 15 chambers including a toilet. There are two alleys parallel to each other which are 19 m apart and there is no more than a 5 mm variance between the two alleys.
It’s an amazing piece of architecture that has been skillfully constructed in the year 127 BC when the variety of tools on offer was very limited. It’s hard to imagine just how difficult it would have been to design and construct such a place and it was completed in 13 years and it covers an area of 700 m2.
I think it would be a great place to stay today because it was so cool inside and it was difficult to drag ourselves away to return to the blistering heat.
We left the tomb and went and had a look at the museum which has the usual bits and pieces but once thing that was really incredible were the “cheat books” There was a collection of books on display that were so small that it’s a wonder that anyone could read them, never mind produce them.
On the wall there was a silk sheet covered in writing and the museum had put a magnifying glass there so that you could see the characters. I have no idea how anyone would be able to write so small and so neatly on a piece of silk and then use it as a cheat sheet. The books are even more amazing when you see the size of them, they are smaller than a pack of cigarettes and yet the writing is neat. It’s the fact that these items were produced so many years ago when they didn’t have modern technology.
These books were created to help the students pass the rigorous exams that lasted over 9 days. The students had to complete 3 out of the 4 pieces of paper that you can see here. Each one took 3 days to complete.