Saturday, February 21, 2009

Letters from Hong Kong - Part IX





Top picture is sunset over Humen Bridge
Middle picture is the Sea Battle Museum at Humen
Bottom picture is entrance to the Zhao Mo Musuem in the heart of Guangzhou.
___________________________________________________
One final report about our trip into China on November 13th

Museum of the Western Han Dynasty – This museum, even though it was pretty small, was one of the best I have visited. This was the tomb of Zhao Mo, the second Emperor of The Southern Yue (203-111 BC), which was an early kingdom in the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC – 24 AD).

Just a little more Chinese history and then we will move on! The Qin Dynasty (220-206 BC) is credited with consolidating China into one kingdom. After the fall of the Qin Dynasty, China again broke up into The Western & Eastern Han kingdoms: The Southern Yue was part of the Western Han

The above Mausoleum was discovered in 1983 when construction workers were putting in foundations for some housing units. Since it was well hidden for over 2000 years, none of the artifacts were looted. It was literally an archaeological gold mine with well over 1000 artifacts. If you ever go to Guangzhou be sure to see the treasures and with the entrance fee of only RMB10, you can't go wrong.

The final place that we visited that I want to discuss is the Sea Battle on the Pearl River in Humen Township. Here in 1839, Len Zexu supervised the destroying of large quantities of seized Opium. The incident, and other trade disputes, resulted in the first Opium war that ended with the ceding of Hong Kong Island to England. Getting to Humen from Guangzhou takes at least an hour and depending on the traffic maybe longer, but I thoroughly enjoyed this museum and again strongly recommend it.

Just a word about getting to and from Guangdong Province from Hong Kong: We have been there on a jetfoil, bus, and train. This past trip we took a bus into China, but came back via train. The bus took us almost four hours to get to Shande Village, about fifteen miles south of Guangzhou. On our return trip to Hong Kong, we took a train out of Guangzhou and it took us one hour to get to Shenzhen to clear immigration; then a transfer to another train into Hong Kong for about another hour.

The train trip out of Guangzhou will rival the ones many of you have taken in Europe, and perhaps better. It was great; clean as a whistle! The train average about 135/kmph and its highest speed was about 200/kmph. But, I’m quite sure, if you take a train into the interior of China, as we have in the past, the train service will not be near as good.

No comments:

Post a Comment