I woke up early today after around 7 hours of sleep, had breakfast with Alicia and Baohui. Then I headed back to my apartment to study and rest a bit before having an outing to the Hubei Provincial Museum instead of a normal classroom lesson.
We all took a bus there and the bus uncle who took us there was very what should I say, a impatient person, when letting us alight at the entrance area, he kept telling us to hurry up and faster when all of us are already hurrying up. It was really irritating.
The front
When entering the entrance area, there was a bag checking area first and water could not be brought into the Hubei Provincial Museum.
Introduction: “Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the Wuchang District of Wuhan, Hubei Province, is the only provincial comprehensive museum in the province. The museum collects, protects, and exhibits the cultural relics discovered in the province. Since 1953, the museum has collected over 200,000 cultural relics, including pottery, porcelains, jade, bronze vessels, ancient weapons, and ancient musical instruments. Among these cultural relics, 812 are listed as first-class relics of China, and 16 are considered national treasures.”
The Chime Bells Exhibition Hall contains two parts: the Exhibition Hall and the Music Hall. In the Exhibition Hall, you can see many cultural relics that have been unearthed from the tomb of Yi (the king of the Zeng Sate in the Warring States Period (476 BC - 221 BC), such as the exquisite bronze vessel known as 'Crane Standing on the Antler', ancient halberds, triangle-shaped swords called Shu, and the bamboo slips that were used for writing on in ancient times. The most famous treasure is the Chime Bells, which is the largest bronze musical instrument ever discovered. With a set of bells of different sizes, it can play various tones of the musical scale, and the timbre is quite beautiful. There are about 3,000 ancient Chinese characters on the bells, describing the music and the owner of this instrument.
The place
Then we headed into the Music Hall to hear an instrumental performance.
The hall
They were musicians wearing some ancient clothing and playing what’s known to be a replica of the Chime Bells. It is an ancient Chu music performance. Chu which is still ruling the present Wuhan area is a strong kingdom which is famous in music. It can be shown through the fact that many China’s classic pieces comes from Chu music. It was really smoothing to ones ear that I heard that someone fell asleep during the performance which lasted only around 20 minutes. I was trying to learn at the point of time how to appreciate the instrumental performance by trying to listen to it carefully.
During the performance
Going to the next place
The exhibition hall of bells
The Chu Culture Exhibition Hall features the regional culture of the Chu State. Most of the cultural relics displayed here are bronze vessels, lacquer works, bamboo and wooden artifacts, and silk knitted products. You can also see various ancient weapons of the Chu State such as the sword of Gou Jian (the king of the Yue State in the Spring and Autumn Period) and the shaft of Fu Chai (the king of the Wu State in the Spring and Autumn Period). In 2002, archaeologists discovered pieces of chariots and horses of the Chu State. After careful restoration, some of the chariots and horses are now displayed in this hall. In addition to the unearthed cultural relics, some restored models of the houses in which Chu people lived are shown to the visitors to give them more direct impression of the ancient Chu people's lives. The following program was to look at artifacts that were displayed in the museum from utensils such as plates, cups to weapons such as arrows to jewellery such as belts to sculptures to bones replicate and many more. I learnt more about the different types of artifacts that were found by the different dynasty of China.
Some of the artifacts
jewellery
Skeleton
And others
We walked around the museum for about 1 hour plus before leaving the museum.
We played some game while waiting for the bus to come to fetch us such as 7-up which relates back to our childhood days and even the teacher, Ms. Shi joined us in playing 7-up too. She is such a friendly teacher.
Also, got to have a sight of how the people assemble after work
The bus driver drove us around the lake area to allow us to admire the scenery for beautify and magnificent lake before bring us back to our school area.
The beautiful sight of the sun setting
After that we headed back to our school area for dinner whereby I had fried tomato with egg and white rice also a cup of bubble tea and sausage. Then I brought some cake back for tomorrow’s breakfast.
