More photos from da ci'en square

As promised, here are some more photos from da ci'en square! These are the best of the lot; there is more to the square than this. It's taken me so long to put these up because it's now the weekend, and I get very busy during the weekend. In other news, I now have a TV! I watched part of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix both dubbed and subtitled in Chinese; I watched part of an old Jet Li movie from when Hollywood didn't know about him; I watched the end of some sort of action movie that was actually in English, despite being a Chinese movie; and the last thing I watched was the best of the lot - it was a Korean movie, subtitled in Chinese, and although I didn't understand a word of it, it managed to be both hilarious in places, and very moving in others. I think that's quite impressive for a movie that you can't understand.

On to the photos! The first is a tiny garden with a sculpture in it. There were half a dozen of these, spaced quite widely in the large paved area in front of the pagoda.


This is a view over the water feature in the same area of the square. The garden statues are downhill from here. The building you can see has fast food outlets, some other shops I didn't identify, and a "Chinese painting, arts and crafts exhibition". The latter turned out to be a shop selling Chinese paintings and beautifully carved jade jewellery. Inside there was even a ship made out of jade.


This is the frieze over the water feature. This is not the same frieze as in my previous post; this one is much shorter. It's still very pretty, though.



These funny carved men are in the Western area of the square, far away from the previous photos. There were several of these sculptures, dotted about the park in that area at random intervals. I liked these guys the best.


This is a shot from a balcony, again on the West side of the square. From this balcony you get as good a view of the Big Goose Pagoda as you're likely to from outside the pagoda wall. The pagoda isn't that interesting from outside, though, so instead of a photo of the pagoda, you get a photo of the balcony itself, because I like it better.


I've saved the best for last! There are several of these sorts of statues too, around the outside wall of the pagoda. Most of them are of scholars and poets; this women was far more striking, though. There is a stone plaque in the ground beside her, and the English portion of it reads thus:
"Gongsun Flying Sword

The works represents the vigorous posture of Lady Gongsun, the folk sword dance master-hand of Tang dynasty, who was dancing with a sword."