All Along the Watchtower

I’ve had to ponder this for a day or two. A few days ago, I read a story informing me that local archaeologists have made an astonishing discovery.

But find them they did. After detailed analysis and research, like asking a passer-by, they have concluded that the towers are in fact mausoleums to hold the ashes of dead monks and nuns from Liuzhou’s Xilai Temple.

Of course, the archaeologists cannot tell you actually which day these erections were thrown up. Still, they go better than the usual Chinese habit of merely dating things by dynasty – vague periods which can be hundreds of years long. No, they are a bit more precise. It appears they date from the 80s.

Yes, the 1980’s. I thought archaeologists dealt with old stuff which they had to dig up. Now, you may think the 1980’s qualifies as old, but I don’t.

Still, apart from me, there is little visible in Liuzhou which is older. Even the old stuff is mostly fake and the “oldest building”, Dongmen (East Gate) is a rebuild. Anything older was bombed by the Japanese in 1944, destroyed by the Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s or devasted by the “beautification” of the city in the 2000s.

However, in 2003, while turning Liuzhou Square from a lively social gathering place, with sidewalk teahouses and bars, into a windswept desert, and building an underground car park hardly anyone uses, they discovered the old Tang Dynasty (look up the date yourself) city walls and immediately reburied them. They also found an 18th century teahouse / brothel at what is now the northern end of the pedestrian street in the city centre. They reburied that, too. But don’t worry. They did build a much needed mobile phone shop on top of it. After all, we only had 6,481 before.

But I digress.

tags: liuzhou  archaeology  erections  

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