Chen Clan Ancestral Hall
Thursday was still cold and wet, and we spent part of the morning making arrangements for our return to the UK – we had booked two nights on Airbnb a long time previously, but the host wanted to cancel so we needed an alternative.
The courtyards held an impressive bonsai collection
A one-stop metro journey took us to the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, where ¥10 each secured our entry so a set of nicely carved buildings, with covered walkways between, set around gardens. They were quite atmospheric in the drizzle.
Pink magnolia at the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall
The buildings held collections of an array of of crafts, including paper-cutting, shell pictures, porcelain overlay, and carvings of wood, jade and ivory. Not all the exhibits were to my taste, but they demonstrated a very high level of skill. and we spent longer there than we expected.
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- Paper cut
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- Etched glass window
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- Carved jade
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- Porcelain overlay
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- Fine porcelain
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- Gilded painting
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- Carved and gilded wood
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- Shell work
Back at Ximenkou metro station we bought cakes from Uncle Fong, a shop near the entrance that we passed often and always had a queue. It was very expensive though, as 4 tarts came to ¥47. The purple ones were just purple custard but perhaps had a fruit flavour, and the browned custards were runny in the centre and perhaps were cheesecakes. Both had very good crumbly pastry and were much better quality than anything we’d bought from Tesco or our regular bakery.
Carved roofs at Chen Clan Ancestral Hall
Dinner was at Peace Kitchen again – laksa for me, a huge serving of noodles with fish fillet for Mr V. I would have liked to have been more adventurous and try other places, but avoiding meat when on a tight budget and being unable to speak or read Chinese was proving difficult – just as in Japan, pork tended to sneak in everywhere at the cheaper end of the market. And a menu in English doesn’t necessarily help much!
