11 Nov. 2011: What's Bronze, Stone, and Jaded All Over?

On a rare Friday without classes, we took bus 95 downtown for Pat's first local walkabout. The "walking street" is really a shopping street --- they all are! But it's punctuated with bronzefigures depicting the Chinese coolie era. So many copycat shops: the Nike swoosh is upside down, Playboy sells shoes, and you can get light bulbs at Joe Camel. As luck would have it, we arrived at a pagoda clock tower at exactly 11 a.m. and paused a minute of silence for Canadian Remembrance Day. Then a few km's walk to the stone Mao statue ---- now there's a guy some Chinese want to Remember, most don't. But the highlight was another few km's up Wenhua Road ---- the Henan Museum with the finest collection of Ming, Qing, and other dynasty's heritage. Zhengzhou was the start of the historic Silk Road, so artifacts from Rome,
Persia, even Africa have been found nearby. All proving that Chinese traders roamed the known world way back to 2000 B.C. Oddly, the building looks Mayan or somewhat Egyptian. But the collection is exquisite and comprised mainly of pieces from the bronze, jade, and stone eras. I get jaded after too much museum. Standard remedy is to stop at the cake shop on the way home...