Shaoxing Sight-Seeing (A Continuation of the Previous Post)

However, we went to none of these places. Instead we went to Orchid Pavilion, or Lan Ting. It was the home of one of the most famous calligraphers in China: legend has it that he assembled many of his poet friends around a stream where they played a drinking game—he floated cups of wine (Shaoxing is also famous for its rice wine) on a stream and when a cup floated to someone he had to drink and compose a poem, which this guy then calligraphied into a famous book.

The grounds were beautiful—they were on the slope of the mountain and we actually had beautiful blue skies, which have appeared now that “fall” (ie, only getting to 80 or so most days) is here, and the cream and brown buildings and green trees and bamboo really stood out against it. In addition to the famous stream, we saw the calligrapher’s house, which had a neat central pool with a little bridge to a pagoda, a pond that I’m pretty sure was black with goose poop but, according to legend, had been blackened by the ink of the calligrapher, a river with a flat zig zagging bridge and, of course, lots of calligraphy, including a giant slab that is famous because it has (allegedly) writing from different kings on each side (I didn’t quite catch the story, but it was in very early China and about warring territories). Here is an assortment from Lan Ting:

this was a shop just outside of Lan Ting-  I love the line up of Marx, Lenin, Commie who I have blanked on, Papa Joe and Mao at the top.