As Tuesday dawned dull and drizzly an indoor activity seemed appropriate, so after a breakfast of egg custard tarts we took the metro to Yuexia Park, near the snappily-named Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King.
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- Attractive but uncomfortable!
The first exhibit was a collection of porcelain pillows, which looked incredibly uncomfortable – the ancient Chinese were very inventive, so I’m surprised this was the best they could do, pillow-wise.
Across the hall was an exhibition of bronze vessels and lacquerware from an archaeological dig from a site at Jiuliandun in Hubei province. The pieces were impressive and astonishingly well-preserved, but unfortunately the information about the site from which they came was only in Chinese.
But the museum was created principally to house the finds from the tomb of a king who died in 122BC, and they were superb – the huge collection of artefacts included a complete jade burial suit, and it was also possible to go down into the actual tomb. The displays were well designed and lit too. We spent a couple of hours there, and it was well worth the ¥12 entry fee.
The tomb
We went back to the Peace Kitchen for dinner, where they served up a really nice spicy sardine spaghetti with lots of olive oil – although it had cloves in it, didn’t taste of cloves, just unusually spiced. Who would have thought that Chinese-Italian fusion would work so well!