Hubei University Day 4

Today was spent in our second music class. We learned about various types of traditional Chinese music. We learned to sing a song in Chinese...a short one..."Jasmine Flower" or Mo li hua. It is a Chinese Folk Song or Zhong guo Min ge. We listened to several types of music from the traditional folk music to the Beijing Opera...which I couldn't stand...it is very high pitched and hurt my ears. But I did love the Chinese Xiqu which is called an opera, but is really more than that...it is more like a play with acrobatics, ballet and opera all mixed together.
The clip we saw was amazing. I'll post it here some time in the future when I get home and have a faster speed to upload.

We then had our first field trip to the Hubei Provincial Museum. It was very nice....a great complex that is less than 4 years old. A few of the spectacular things they had in their museum were the ancient bronze bells or Bian Zhong found in Hubei province...that are about 2000 years old. They were part of a massive tomb that archaeologists believe belonged to a nobleman of the Chu. There was also a set of the Bian Qing the hung stone tablets that are played like the hanging bronze Bian Zhong.

Another great part of the museum was the King of Yue copper sword that is 2300 years old, and still looks brand new. Scientist have study the sword and have figured out some of the mixture that made the sword, but still don't know why it is so well preserved. It is from the Warring States Period, and was found in a Chu tomb, even though it is from the Yue people. It is believed to have been a spoil of war since they Chu had conquered the Yue. There are records that mention the Yue, but nothing written by them and very little has been discovered of theirs that was part of the Chu. So they are still a bit of a mystery, although their craftsmanship seems superior to the Chu (at least from the things we saw in the museum). (The Chu were the most powerful state in the South...they were eventually defeated themselves by the Qin of the north who started the Great Wall.)

The other amazing thing we saw in the museum was the horse and chariots that were found in the massive tomb of an important Chu nobleman and his wife in what is now the town of Zao Yang. The chariots and the skeletons of the horses are in excellent condition. The horses were killed and then put in the tomb with the chariots. Bronze arrowheads have been found in the necks of the horses so even show how they were killed. There were 33 chariots and 76 horses total.

One other thing that was pretty interesting were the small jade animals pictured below. These small animals were found in the mouths of the dead in the tombs of the Chu nobles mentioned above. Jade is thought to fight off evil in the afterlife, so it is put in the mouths of the dead to help them in the next life. The jade of these small animals soaked up the blood of the dead so that you can see the color change in the animal.

After our tour of the museum, we enjoyed a performance that included the bronze bells and the stones...as well as many other of the ancient instruments we studied in our class. It was brief, but excellent. The large bells are really something else.

We then drove to the West Lake and enjoyed a beautiful walk around the lake.

After class today and the museum, we had free time for dinner on our own.

So a group of us went to PIZZA HUT! Western food was welcomed! Our server was one of the students at Hubei and she had made up her own English name, Lusika (lew-si-kuh). She was so sweet, and totally would not take a tip (a fee she called it) because she considered us friends, and you were NOT to take fees from friends.

It would be disrespectful.

We enjoyed being out seeing the life on the streets of Wuhan.