summer2009 roadtrip day 10

阆中(LangZhong): 张飞庙(ZhangFei Temple), 华光门(HuaGuang Tower), 贡院(Imperial Testing Grounds)
重庆(ChongQing): home

# # # chinese doorsteps are tall # # #
More photos of the courtyard I'm staying at. Here is a depiction of the typical courtyard. Ours has a similar layout, except with two courtyards (the second one connected behind the first). This Li family must have been very rich.
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# # # zhangfei's beef...and his temple # # #
ZhangFei, one of the sworn brothers of LiuBei, leader of the Shu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms era, is buried in LangZhong. He also guarded the city for a long time.
Oh, and he was a cook. That's why there's beef named after him.
Anywhos, first stop today was the ZhangFei Temple. It wasn't particularly amazing really. Like most other temples I've visited, lots of incense (which I think I'm allergic to I swear) and commemorative statues.
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# # # climbing a tower is like climbing a ladder # # #
After the temple, we took a little boat downstream.
Turns out the Ancient City is kinda huge.
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Our next stop was to climb the HuaGuang Tower. Not sure exactly what the tower is for...maybe it's a lighthouse? Or a watchtower for the city?
The tower itself was really difficult to climb as the stairs are narrow and the steps are short.
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Not much else to the tower, it was fun for impromptu ladder-stairs climbing though.


# # # ancient tests are a billion times more painful # # #
Next stop was the Imperial Testing Grounds.
The Imperial Tests (or Chinese Civil Service Tests) happen every 3 years where young males from around the region gather to write exams that will be judged and sorted until the ones deemed most worthy are presented to the royal court. The highest prize to be won is the status of 状元/ZhuangYuan among other positions within the court. Of course this tended to only recruit people like-minded to the values in the exams into the imperial courts - and of course women were excluded.
This testing system is also the basis for civil service exams in other parts of Asia and Europe.
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I lost the photo for this next part, but exam takers were stuffed into small rooms of a dozen or so cubicles about only wide enough to sit a fully grown man. Each cubicle had wooden panels that serve as a desk during the daytime (when there's light to write the exam) and a "bed" during nighttime (when there's dim light and people take out their cheating clothes to cheat by moonlight).
They would then stay in their cubicles for like a week or something (there were pots for bathroom breaks in the rooms) until the testing period was over.

Some people spend a great deal of their lives taking the exam over and over again (since they come once very three years) hoping to get a position in the imperial court or, you know, rich.

I'm going to go ahead and skip the part where the tour guide helped cheat us out of like, 20yuan in the "temple of good luck" where exam takers came to pray for good fortune for their families or whatever before taking their exams.
Every Chinese tourist spot seems to have a "special prayer" stop where they take you to a room, tell you it's a good idea to buy some sort of magic luck charm, bow to a clay figure of some emperor or immortal, and then get your fortune told by a monk who smokes and tries to cheat even more money out of you (say...1000yuan) in the name of holy charity or something.

Aaaand I seem to have not skipped that rant after all. You have been warned.

What a despairing note to end my trip journal on...
At least I enjoyed most of it!

# 完 / THE END #