[Xi'an trip day 6] Doubt your life at the ruins equivalent to 500 football fields

Day 6: Yu Youren’s former residence

In the morning, my friend felt unwell and rested, so I went alone. For lunch, I went to a popular noodle shop nearby.

——Aihua Trouser Noodle Shop

 

Their noodles are not served in bowls, but in basins. The portions are really large.

When you come to Xi'an to eat pasta, friends who don't eat much must ask you to cook less noodles in advance.

I ordered a small portion

Paired with a bottle of local specialty sour plum juice

 

 

I have eaten noodles in Xi'an for a few days and think they are all the same... But this one is really good and I can give it 3.5 stars.

 

After dinner, we stopped by the nearby Yu Youren’s Former Residence Museum (full ticket 30 yuan)

Scan the QR code electronically to buy tickets, no physical tickets are available

 

 

Friends who like the history of the Republic of China should be familiar with Yu Youren. He is a famous politician, educator, and calligrapher in modern China...

 

Regarding Yu Youren, I have only read about it in some books about the affairs of celebrities in the Republic of China, but I have not learned about his specific experience in detail.

 

In order for everyone not to just take a quick look like me, I checked some excerpts of Yu Youren's life on the Internet and put them below together with the picture introduction in the museum for your convenience.

 

According to online information, when the Kuomintang government retreated from the mainland to Taiwan in 1949, it forcibly took away a group of celebrities. Yu Youren, who had served as a senior official in the Nationalist government for many years, was one of them.

In the same year, the Kuomintang blocked the Taiwan Strait in the name of "preventing espionage secrecy" and "defending Taiwan's security" and prohibited any form of exchanges between the two sides.

After Yu Youren went to Taiwan, he separated from his wife and daughter and never saw each other again.

It was not until 1987 that Taiwan allowed Taiwanese people to visit relatives on the mainland, 23 years after Yu Youren's death.

Although the name of Yu Youren's Former Residence Museum hangs here, it is actually the former residence where his wife and daughter lived after he went to Taiwan.

 

In the display cabinet on the first floor of the exhibition hall, Yu Youren’s life is introduced in the form of words + old objects.

 

 

After reading them all, there are three things that impressed me the most:

First, he spent a lot of money to collect inscriptions over a period of more than 20 years, and donated them all to Forest of Steles Museum

 

 

Second, he founded Aurora Public School (the predecessor of Fudan University)

 

Shanghai University and Northwest A&F University were also founded by him.

 

The third is the deep love between him and his wife Ms. Gao Zhonglin .

 

In 1958, the 60th wedding anniversary of Yu Youren and Gao Zhonglin was also the ninth year since he went to Taiwan. This year Yu Youren was 80 years old.

 

He wrote in his thoughts: "Reminiscing about his wife Gao Zhonglin"

The branches of Liangjie River and Mountain are withering, and the miserable wind blows off the Xianyang Bridge.

The old couple shed tears and waited for the first night of their golden wedding.

There is another song "Missing My Wife-in-law Gao Zhonglin":

 

In March 1961, I regretted not being able to celebrate my wife’s birthday.

 

It’s really sad to see it

 

 

Yu Youren's calligraphy is famous for cursive, and he is known as contemporary cursive sage. The first floor of the exhibition hall displays Yu Youren’s calligraphy works

 

 

On the third floor of the exhibition hall, which is also the second floor of the former residence, some calligraphy and paintings collected by Yu Youren are displayed, such as the rubbings of the "Twenty Products of Longmen" from the Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang.

I don’t know calligraphy, so I just wandered around the exhibition hall.

What impressed me most during the whole tour was the building itself . It was the first time I saw this kind of original building that had been preserved since the Republic of China and is still in use today.

 

There is paper, pen and ink spread out on the table by the window on the second floor, and a light rain falls from the sky.

 

Some fell from the eaves, and some fell into the fish pond in the center of the yard. It felt like "the rain of apricot blossoms makes your clothes wet, and the wind of willows blows on your face without chilling".

Day 6 Part 2: Rampage in Daming Palace

This day was the saddest day of my entire tour. Because the weather was so bad and we didn’t have a good schedule in the afternoon, the tour was very hasty, so the whole experience was not very good.

I wrote down the process in the hope that everyone can learn from my lesson and plan your time well when visiting Daming Palace !

We arrived at Daming Palace at two o'clock in the afternoon.

 

Daming Palace Tickets

The real Daming Palace had been burned down in the wars at the end of the Tang Dynasty, so basically nothing remained on the original site except the foundation and some bricks and stones.

The Daming Palace is as its name suggests. It is really very big, very big, very big ... so big that even a "bosozoku" like me who loves walking has a hard time walking visit

So after my friend and I arrived at the scenic spot, we took a sightseeing train (40 yuan per person).

This small train will circle the Daming Palace and stop at any time. There are many stops along the way, and passengers can get on and off at any time.

 

small train moving

There is absolutely no problem in taking the small train. The problem is that because we went to Daming Palace on a spur-of-the-moment basis and didn’t do any planning, we didn’t know that Daming Palace is divided into a free tour area and a paid heritage area.

 

We bought tickets and did not enter the paid heritage area to visit! ! ! I have been stupidly taking the sightseeing train around the free tourist area

 

The weather was not good that day, the cold wind was blowing hard, and we couldn’t see much beautiful scenery while traveling by train. We were really two idiots...

 

And later I found out that you can actually buy a package ticket for attractions + train + Daming Palace movie at the ticket office. it will be cheaper than buying tickets for attractions + train separately.

 

If you don’t want to take the train or watch a movie, tickets can also be purchased separately .

 

The ticket mainly allows you to visit two parts: one is the museum inside the Danfengmen restored building . The second is Daming Palace Ruins Area and Ruins Area Museum .

Danfengmen Ruins ( is a museum inside, with entrances at both ends )

 

I buy souvenirs at a peripheral store

Inside Danfengmen Museum

Tang Dynasty curly grass pattern square tiles

 

The restoration of Danfeng Gate was presided over by Ms. Zhang Jinqiu , a disciple of Mr. Liang Sicheng.

If you have read my travelogue to Shaanxi Expo and picked up "National Treasure" Season 1, Issue 4 , you should have an impression of this lady.

Because Ms. Zhang Jinqiu restored and built the "Three Chu Que" of the Tang Dynasty (in the Tang Dynasty Furong Garden in Xi'an) based on the "Picture of the Guard of Ceremony of the Que Tower" collected by the Shaanxi Museum.

In addition to the Danfeng Gate and Tang Furong Garden, many famous buildings such as the Shaanxi History Museum, Qujiang Pool, Bell and Drum Tower Square, Shaanxi Provincial Library, etc. were all designed by her.

 

I didn't know about this at first. It wasn't until I saw the information pictures on the wall in the Danfengmen Ruins Museum that I connected the previous experience with this day.

 

The things in the Danfengmen Ruins Museum are not that "pretty" because they are all about architecture-related science and introduction. But if you look carefully, you can find a lot of interesting little knowledge.

For example, does anyone know how many meters one Tang Chi is equal to today?

 

Walking out of the Danfengmen Museum, the Ceramic Treasures Museum is right next to it.

Although the exterior is unremarkable, various types of exquisite ceramics from past dynasties are displayed inside, which is the most beautiful exhibit among the three museums I saw that day.

 

 

There is also a science exhibition board attached to the back of each ceramic, which is very informative along the way.

 

We spent a lot of time in the small train, Danfeng Gate, and Ceramics Museum. When we finally went to the ruins area, the museum closed in an hour...The staff was more anxious than us, urging Let’s not go shopping anymore. Let’s go to the ruins area museum first.

How should I put it? I think the things in the museum in the ruins area are not as good as the ceramics museum... they are really average, let alone compared with Shaanxi Expo and Xi'an Museum.

This day's tour was indeed not smooth, but it is a pity that I will go there again if there is a chance with good weather!

If I saw anything "beautiful" that day, it was the maple leaves on the wire fence surrounding the Daming Palace ruins area.

 

The maple leaves in Daming Palace are the most beautiful maple leaves I have ever seen, bar none.

 

Although the travelogue is not finished yet, thank you to those friends who persisted in reading this.