Will Buckingham: At the Shaanxi First Demonstration Model in Adolescent Moral Education

At the Shaanxi First Demonstration Model in Adolescent Moral Education

Wednesday August 11, 2010

Otherwise known as the Shaanxi History Museum. I’m writing this at breakfast time – eating some very tasty cheese pastries (Xi’an, being somewhat to the West, has a substantial Islamic population, and it is this, I think, that I have to thank for the pastries) whilst doing my best to ignore the conversation of the two men standing next to me, arms folded, discussing me – and by extension the curious ways of all foreigners – in Chinese. Why do they come all this way, and then buy such cheap breakfast? they are asking. Because cheese pastries can’t be beat when it comes to breakfast, I’m tempted to interject; but I don’t really want to get involved.

Yesterday was spent mainly standing in queues. I first went to the ticket office to sort out my final overnight ticket. I was there at nine, tickets went on sale twenty minutes beforehand, and by the time I got there, they were all sold out. I’m never sure what “sold out” actually means – those with connections (as I had in Jinan) can manage to get tickets even if they are seemingly all gone – but the woman behind the counter was insistent. So I thought I’d try my luck at the rail station. Same story there, but I did manage to sort out a ticket that will get me most of the way I want to go by sleeper. The other bits of the journey I’ll cobble together by local train or bus.

Having spent much of my morning in queues, I then went to the Shaanxi history museum, where I stood in line for a long time before being issued with a free ticket. The reason for the long queues was the astonishingly inefficient system that required every visitor to sign in with their name, age, identity card number and so forth. Anyway, after an hour of waiting in line, I took my ticket to the entrance. At the gate, an adolescent in need of demonstration models in moral education, dressed his security uniform, took one look at me, made a violent chopping gesture with his left hand, made a violent chopping gesture with his right hand, and barred my way.

“Sorry,” I said in Chinese. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Another violent chopping gesture with left hand, another violent chopping gesture with right hand.

“Sorry, you need to explain what you mean.”

Various alarming and threatening gestures.

“Look, I know a little Chinese. Please just tell me what you are trying to say.”

He paused. “You must put your bag in the cloakroom. You can’t bring it in.”

“Oh, OK. Thanks.”

By this time, I was not feeling particularly warmly towards the Shaanxi history museum. The thing about museums of history and archaeology in China is that the exhibits are invariably spectacular, but there are only so many Shang dynasty bronze vessels that you can see without wanting to go and do something else. So I didn’t spend a great deal of time in the museum, which was crowded and far from being the best collection I’ve seen. But in the museum bookshop I was sorely tempted by the hardbound copy of “Hello Deng Xiaoping”, with the diminutive fellow sitting in a big armchair on the cover (the big chair was a mistake for such a little guy), an enormous and glossy book that was so covered in dust that it looked as if nobody had touched it for over two decades. Deng enthusiasts can, I have discovered, find the book here.

Next I’m off in search of bigger prey, however, with the terracotta army of Qin Shihuang. Then I’ll be heading West to Tianshui, from where I’ll catch you up on my news.