Ming Courtyard
- Riley Smith
- Oct 1, 2019
- 6 min read
I had the strangest dreams that night. I was in some sort of foreign disneyland park that was designed like and IKEA where you had to go on every ride in a certain order. There was a mine ride in a volcano that had no track and big drops, a haunted house ride that was entirely on the walls of the house and I was sliding through it, and a sci fi movie theater that the seats fell out from under you but dropped me off by my hotel. Something must have woken me up, I don't know what, because I remember falling back asleep and I was at the front of the park again, but this time with my friends Richy and Frank and we did the whole park all over again. It wasn't quite a nightmare, but I would definitely call it a restless and unnerving sleep.
I woke up at 6 the next morning to a chorus of farts from the other sleeping men. It couldn't have have been choreographed better. No two men farted at the same time, it was one fart, then another, then another, all beckoning me to get out of bed and start my day.
I also was sick. I don't know if it was all the walking or the cigarettes in the room or sleeping under the air conditioner, but I had a sore throat and a headache.
I checked out (they almost tried to make me stay in the room longer but must have realized that was cruel), hopped on the subway, and got off and whatever the name of my subway stop was. I stopped at a KFC so I could get a coffee and use there WiFi, and also ended up ordering a breakfast rice roll. It was terrible. It was basically rice, chicken, crouton powder and celery. It was mostly crouton powder. I ended up just eating the celery by itself. Also, my VPN was down again because of this Hong Kong stuff so the WiFi was a little useless.
On Trip Advisor, it said I was very near the Nanjing Museum so I tried to start of my day by finding that. But the museum was not where Trip Advisor said it was. Trip Advisor sucks (a common theme in my day to day life, I know you are thinking why keep using Trip Advisor. Send me a link for something else and I'll use that instead, there is only trip advisor. The other stuff doesn't even have addresses). So I went to a local liquor store, grabbed a cactus and tangerine water (also, noticed a garden tomato lays flavor. Don't know how this is different from original tomato,) and headed towards the Purple Mountains national park.
I bought the purple mountain day pass so I could visit all the exhibits and started with the Ming Courtyard. This park was much more natural than Xuanwu Park. There were real birds and none of those squawking machines. As I was walking, there were lots of old people doing what I think was Tai Chi but looked like spanking themselves. I'm don't touch my butt that much (only on special occasions) but I couldn't think of a better place to do it.
I saw signs pointing to a forest museum and thought that would be a good place to start my adventure. The museum was very small, almost like a kids museum. It was also completely empty except for a janitor who kept yelling things at me. I have a feeling the museum wasn't open yet and I just walked through it anyway, I guess not knowing Chinese has it's advantages. The museum was pretty lame anyways, they just had a few tree stumps and some pictures with words in Chinese underneath.
There was a gate so I couldn't get a good picture, but I walked past the cutest little cottage in the middle of the park that had a little pond, a little dock with a little boat and little ducks in it, and a little cat napping out front. Than, 50 feet later, I saw what looked like the exact same cat napping somewhere else. I'm sure it was twins and not teleporting (The Prestige spoiler), but it was still very eerie.
If you are a person who is into open world video games, I recommend going to a park. It's like a video game, but you are really there. You can walk in any direction you want and see whats in the different areas. It's very cool.
A guy walked past me who was clapping on every second step. This might be the Gitanjali I've been reading getting to me, but I assumed this was some sort of way to show his devotion to God. He may also just have had OCD. The world will never know.
The Sacred Path is a long walkway leading to the Ming Palace. Along the path are giant sculptures on either side. Above are shown the unicorn, which are part lion, part tiger, part ox and part dragon in China. Ming was the first emperor to ever have a unicorn put in front of his tomb, because unicorns only appeared in the reigns of benevolent and wise emperors. Their is another type of unicorn called the Xiezhi, or bear-eyed unicorn, who could identify evil people by touching them with his horn (this, to me, sounded anti-Semitic.) There were also lions, elephants, camels, tigers and all other sorts of animals lining the path to Ming's Palace.
The Ming Palace cost extra money and I would have had to exit the Ming Courtyard and I had not yet seen the Ming tomb, so I doubled pack and continued to walk around. The gardens were very beautiful. Even though everything was still probably man made, there was a much more natural element here than in Xuanwu Park. Yes, there were buildings, but there were real trees growing around that didn't constanly seem decided upon. Everything was greener.
I took a shit in a public bathroom and it was surprisingly clean. You still had to take your toilet paper before entering the stall and squat, but it didn't smell terrible and wasn't covered in urine. As I squatted, I noticed there was a second toilet paper dispenser in the stall.
The Ming Courtyard is famous for it's giant plum orchard, supposedly one of the most beautiful in the world. So I walked over there next. I guess the orchard is probably much more beautiful when all the trees are in bloom (March) because it sort of just looked like regular trees to me.
In the plum orchard, there was a beautiful little pagoda with a nice view and a man meditating. I walked up to take in the view myself, and while I was there (only about 45 seconds,) the man stopped meditating and stared at me. Is there some sort of pagoda etiquette I don't know about? Also, that guy needs to get better at meditating.
Next I stopped by a Confucius Appreciation Museum, which was not yet open yet but had a giant statue with a funny face
and what was called some person's name I can't remember art something or other. There was no art, it was just more garden surrounded by walls and circular entrances.
There was this giant rock thing in the middle that was pretty cool.
There was also a little herb garden that looked like nothing, but I thought the signs description of an herb matching game scholars used to play fascinating.
Finally, I began my trek over to the Ming Tomb so I could leave the Ming Courtyard and go on with the Purple mountain. The map said there was a treasure mound and I was hoping we would see his dead body too. This is why we come to China, for the mummies. (We all saw The Mummy 3: Curse of the Dragon Emperor)
I walked through the first archway and came to a small area with lots of trees and bushes, a few small shrines, and a little red building.
Next to the little red building was a placard explaining some of the history of Ming's tomb. Basically, Ming was a real popular emperor and a cool guy so when he died 700 years ago, they built this giant tomb for him. Than, 200 years ago, two different guys wanted to be emperor at the same time, and one of them destroyed Ming's tomb to piss the other one off. 150 years ago, after the war was over, the winner rebuild the tomb and that's actually what we are looking at now. I walk inside the little red building, and it's a gift shop where you can buy cheap fans and the same crap that's in every gift shop everywhere.
Around the building was another wall and then a little bridge and finally, what looked like the entrance to the actual tomb.
I went through the archway and up a large staircase that took me to the top of the wall. I then walked up another flight of stairs to get to the entrance of the building, walked inside and it was empty other than a few other tourists. No treasure, no exhibits, just a big empty room. I walk to the edge of the wall and look over the other side. Nothing but a bunch of trees where there is supposed to be a treasure mound. No dead bodies at all. So I walk back down both staircases, through the arch, over the bridge, through the wall, around the little red building, out the main entrance and through Ming's Courtyard so I can get back to Ming's Palace, don't pay for it, and continue my journey up the green way towards Dr. Sun Yan's Courtyard and Mausoleum.
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