To get there is easy - there's a bus that takes me straight there, and it leaves from almost outside my door. One of the teachers told me which bus to catch, and I didn't need to know any Chinese to know when I was there - I could see the pagoda from two bus stops away, despite the ever-present smog. Although the bus trip was simple, it was very long. I live in the North side of the city, and it took well over an hour to get there.
I didn't go in the pagoda, because they charge you for that. Daci'en Square, however, is free for anyone to wander around in, and there's a lot to see there. I'll get to the rest of it in a subsequent post, because I haven't dealt with all the photos yet. This time, you only get one photo - but it's a good one. It took me two hours to stitch together, from a 25-photo panorama (I had to put it together myself because Photoshop's panorama tools couldn't cope with it).
On the North face of the wall surrounding the Big Goose Pagoda, there's a huge sculpted frieze. It's 3 metres high and 106 metres long, and it illustrates the accomplishments of the dynasty of the time - its scientific and cultural advances, and its communication with other cultures. Here it is a small section of it; click to see the full image at deviantArt. Warning: the full file is 13000 pixels wide, and nearly 500KB.
3 comments:
Whoa! Looked at the whole thing, hard to imagine 100+ metres. Nice stitching job
Hey man, any word on the early morning martial arts?
It's really worth going to the parks just after dawn, to see the crazy variety of the activities. I reccomend kicking the feather Jianzi, takes a bit to get used to but great fun.
Fantastic. I wasn't going to bother looking at the whole thing (being lazy), but i'm really glad I did.
Post a Comment