Qingzhou Museum

The Qingzhou Museum was under construction. As in... there was scaffolding everywhere, clay tiles being pried from the traditional styled roof, and welding going on. But the Qingzhou Museum was not closed... and although patrons were sparse, the staff gave every indication it was perfectly normal to have the museum open despite full on renovation.

We waited @ the entrance with our twenty-something factory engineers cum tour guides, Candy and Lisa, neither of whom had ever been to the museum.

"Um, what are we waiting for?" I asked... the day had kind of gone like this... I wasn't sure what our schedule was and each previous question had been answered by a question. "Are we going to the museum?" I had asked as we left the train station. "Do you want to go to the museum?" they had queried in response. I assured them that we did. In fact, on the short list of things to do in Qingzhou, the museum was @ the top of my list. I had recently read a rather flattering piece about the antiquities housed within, and that they were some of the oldest, on record, in China.

But, as we waited, and I noted the clang of construction materials and the dust escaping many sections of the museum, I thought I had misremembered. Maybe that museum was somewhere else. But since my questions to this point had all seemed futile, I decided to stand and wait in the dusty foyer with my mother-in-law and three incredibly patient children.

"We are waiting for the transmitter." Lisa offered helpfully. Museums world wide offer small head seats that allow you to do a 'self guided' tour, often in your own language. But, I hardly felt that would be necessary. But I needn't have worried: our 'transmitter' showed up in human form. Translator, is what she had meant.

We entered into the courtyard of the museum flanked on all four sides by a structure, built in the early 1980s to resemble a traditional courtyard home. We headed into the calligraphy building, ducking under scaffolding as we went. I cast my mom-in-law a wary look .... and then put a stop to going further when I realized our 'transmitter' intended to lead our team of three adults and three children through a maze of iffy scaffolding that had been set up on the steps leading to the second floor. On said scaffolding were nimble constructions workers, shod in canvas shoes slopping a thin whitewash on the walls.

"Are the Buddhas here?" I asked. The article I had read had been about the ancient Buddhas.

"This is calligraphy."

"Can we just see the Buddhas?"

It was clear I was asking her to give the tour out of order. She was uncomfortable. We wouldn't be getting the full tour. She wouldn't be doing her job.

Nevertheless, off to the Buddha building we tramped. They had to turn the lights on. When the kids had to use the toilet it was upstairs. No scaffolding to navigate around, but no electricity on the second floor... which meant the girls had to toilet in the dark. The cleaning ayis and the second floor docents (all of whom must be accustomed to working in the darkness) gathered in the women's room to peek at the foreign children.

Back down to the Buddhas, and Steeles and tomb markers that predated the common era. Artifacts from 200 years before Christ hung in an unairconditioned dark museum, unguarded by anyone, or anything. There were no velvet ropes, motion detectors or protective glass. I reached out my hand and felt the smoothness of age on the carved stone steeles. We took pictures of the Buddhas, we asked questions that none of our guides could answer.

I could not wrap my head around the possibility that something so old seemed so neglected. We ventured to another Buddha building, with sculptures from the sixth century. These, did have ropes cordoning off the area, but the Buddhas (most of whom had been unearthed headless) seemed to be propped up precariously.

One source of comfort came in the heavy wooded crates. Some of the collection of Buddhas was going on a world tour, bound for some European destination, where they would certainly be well protected. The girls and I chatted with the workers, asking them how they packed them, how they sealed the crates. Where they nervous to be working with something so valuable? We had just watched Night at the Museum II, and so the girls were fascinated with the boxes of the exhibits, Bei Bei even joked that they would come alive at night.