China’s marquee tourist-experiences—the Wall, the Square, the Duck; a circuit known to some as “Walling and Ducking”—are so iconic that visitors often miss the country’s minor brushstrokes. The country is in the midst of a museum-building boom, so I was pleased to see “China: Museums,” a new English-language paperback that burrows into places you would almost certainly miss—unless you’re the type of traveller who never leaves a country without setting foot in its Eunuch Museum or its Tap Water Museum. Authors Miriam Clifford, Cathy Giangrande, and Antony White have trooped through hundreds of museums and plucked out the best bits. Clifford answered some questions:
Of the two hundred and fifteen sites that you and your co-authors visited, which did you find the most surprisingly satisfying?
Many of the museums were surprising—sometimes for their subject matter—such as the Tap Water Museum or the Tank Museum, but more often because our first impression of a museum was sometimes that it was run down and of little interest—but by the time we walked out the door, we were highly enthused and felt we had learned so much more about whatever that museum was about and also about what makes China tick. Many of these small museums have funding problems and still have Chinese signage only so that is a stumbling block for tourists. We usually had curators guiding us through and that made all the difference to the experience. We are trying to duplicate that with our book—by giving the reader the background knowledge they need to understand why a particular museum is important and then to guide them through the museum itself. The most successful museum experience is one where you come out having learned something you didn’t know before—and so many of China’s smaller museums are a real glimpse into China’s preoccupations.
And of course, as authors we really enjoyed finding the most out-of-the-way, off-the-beaten-track museums, which brings us to your second question.
There are some odd ones in here. Which was the strangest?
Of course, this is culturally sensitive—what might seem strange to us may not be to a Chinese. In fact, we thought at first we might have the word “quirky” in our title—when we told this to a Chinese friend, he seemed insulted. “Strange” is only in the eye of the beholder! But, from our point of view, I guess two of our favorite “strange” ones would be the Eunuch Museum in Beijing and the Linzi Funerary Horse Pit Museum of the Eastern Zhou in Shandong. The Eunuch Museum is connected to a eunuch cemetery in western Beijing. It was built for a Ming dynasty eunuch, Tian Yi, who was a favorite of the Wanli Emperor. The cemetery itself is a quiet, soulful place—it’s really got atmosphere. At the gate is a small museum explaining “eunuch culture” with posters, photos of eunuchs at court, and an explanation of the surgery itself. The graveyard is located in a small village within Beijng—the sort that hardly exists nowadays, so you also have the benefit of stepping into the past of this now totally modernized city, and it is fascinating to stroll around the town and its narrow, meandering, and ramshackle streets. By the way, in this village there are also other buildings built by eunuchs during the Ming, including an unusual fortified temple, and the Fahai Temple, with its magnificent Buddhist wall paintings, which are viewed by flashlight.
The Linzi Funerary Horse Pit (at right) was a shock. In our taxi, we bumped across a famer’s field outside of a small village in Shandong and ended up at this archaeological site dating to the Spring and Autumn Period. Six hundred horses, all laid out in the same position, were sacrificed in the grave of a Qi dynasty king. He is in the center, they are lined up around him on three sides of a rectangle. Only two hundred and twenty-eight of the six hundred horse skeletons have been excavated due to lack of resources, but the sight of a lineup of horse skeletons almost as far as the eye can see is incredible.
All cultures create a myth of themselves. After seeing so many of China’s efforts to present itself and its history, did you get a sense of the spirit in which China regards itself? In other words, what kinds of things does it address head-on, and what does it efface?
China’s museums are different from those you find in the States or Europe because they almost all exclusively deal with Chinese objects, history, and culture. The big state museums are all about history and objects Chinese. Additionally and understandably, their target audience is Chinese people—hence the preponderance of signage in Chinese only. Many museums, as you might expect, have an underlying political message sometimes presented more obviously than others. One extreme example would be the Tibet Museum in Lhasa, where the signage in Chinese and English is clearly designed to assert China’s right to hegemony in Tibet.
It is also true that the Cultural Revolution and certainly the events in Tiananmen are almost always skipped over in exhibitions. Surprisingly, though, China does have two fascinating private museums that deal quite openly with the Cultural Revolution. One is more or less a memorial park in Guangdong—built on a hillside in which many victims of the Red Guards are said to be buried. The other is the extraordinary museum complex, owned by an extremely wealthy property developer, Fan Jianchuan, near Chengdu—twenty-five full size museums that deal with the anti-Japanese War and the Cultural Revolution, containing his personal collection of over eight million objects! Both of these museums are a sort of “holocaust museum” with the message “never forget.”
Patriotism is a major factor in every Chinese citizen’s education, and Chinese museums often reflect this point of view—it is inescapable here.
What is a piece of advice for China travellers that they won’t get from other books?
Don’t be put off by the thought of “visiting a museum.” It is not a bore—you can learn a lot about the place you are in and the people you meet. The trick is to not make negative assumptions and to ask to speak to a guide or curator when you go to a small museum. They are almost always enthusiastic, highly informed, and willing to come out and show you around. You’ll come away with a whole new take on Chinese culture and a much greater appreciation.
Photos by Miriam Clifford. The first picture is from the Jianchuan Museum Complex outside Chengdu, where a memorial wall to Sichuan veterans of the anti-Japanese War presents handprints and signatures of visitors.
