Last night, we left at 11 p.m. (after Gina got off work) on a quick one-day trip to Zhenjiang (4/5 of the way from Shanghai to Nanjing). I was hopeful of finding some unpublished tomb epitaphs, and Gina came along for the ride. It was not exactly a pleasant train trip on a hard-seater in the middle of the night. We sought refuge in the train restaurant for a while, ordering a dish we didn't really want. But by a bit past midnight, the restaurant staff started encouraging customers to vacate the premises and we spent the rest of the trip with everybody else in the crowded train car. We arrived in Zhenjiang a little before 3 AM and went straight to the hotel.
The Zhenjiang museum is set in the former grounds of the British Consulate (part of Zhenjiang became a British concession after the Treaty of Tianjin). Here's a view of the museum from the front:
I arrived at the museum just after 9. It turns out that May 18 is National Museum Day, so there was free admission. To my surprise, an assistant director of the museum was waiting for me near the entrance and somehow managed to identify me immediately (could it have been because I'm not Chinese?). He brought me to his office, informed me of a whopping 300 RMB fee for access to the storage rooms, and led me to a room in a locked building near the back of the museum compound. I was definitely disappointed to discover no unpublished inscriptions there, though it was still fun to look at some of the stones (and bricks) from up close (though was it worth 300 RMB?). After inspecting the available material, I spent a little additional time looking around the museum grounds. The museum is finely situated on the side of a hill, with a view of the surrounding area (including the Yangzi River in the distance):
(the small hill with the pagoda on top that can be barely made out in the background is Jiaoshan Park...more on that below).
Gina met me at the museum to have a peek as well. Here we are (very coincidentally wearing similar clothing):
Possibly because of the free admission, it was interesting to observe several couples taking their marriage pictures in the museum grounds:
We walked along the Yangzi for a ways, then hopped on a bus that took us to the entrance to Jiaoshan Park. Jiaoshan Park is a small mountain-island (180 meters or so tall) in the middle of the Yangzi River. After crossing over on a ferry, we wandered around a little bit. Here we are amid Japanese maples:
The primary destination for me was the Jiaoshan Inscription Museum, featuring numerous stone inscriptions going back as far as the Six Dynasties Period (i.e. 3rd-6th centuries). There were more tomb epitaphs of interest, though, unfortunately, none that had not already been published. Here's me examining an epitaph (just so there's a little solid evidence that I was working hard on this trip)...sorry the picture is a little blurry:
We also climbed the mountain which had views of the Yangzi River (although the views were largely obstructed by tree foliage...we were too cheap to pay the additional 15 RMB to climb the pagoda on top of the hill that would have brought us above the trees). There were some pretty impressive barges visible in the distance:
On the way back to the ferry, Gina was suddenly very excited to have found a fruit-covered mulberry tree:
We headed back into town and, after exploring a little downtown, where we got some fairly tasty choudoufu (fermented tofu) and relaxed in KFC for a while, we boarded a 6:10 express train back to Shanghai. By 9, we were home. Maomao seemed reasonably happy to see us...
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