Morning - the Stele Forest
The Stele Forest began in 1087, when the Northern Song authorities moved a set of Tang stone classics into the Confucian temple on this site to keep them from being broken up and sold; the temple and the collection have grown together ever since. The museum now holds more than three thousand stelae and stone carvings, of which a few hundred stand in the original halls, the six stele pavilions and the covered corridor of the temple. The collection is the reason Xi'an is the place to study Chinese calligraphy: it holds the Kaicheng Stone Classics, one hundred and fourteen stones carved between 833 and 837 with 650,252 characters of the Confucian canon; the Duobao Pagoda Stele cut by Yan Zhenqing in 752; the Xuanmi Pagoda Stele of Liu Gongquan from 841; and the preface to Xuanzang's translations assembled in 672 from characters collected out of the handwriting of Wang Xizhi, a twenty-five-year act of devotion by a monk named Huairen.
Late morning - what to look at closely
Two stones repay time. The Stone Platform Classic of Filial Piety, carved in 745 and written out by the emperor Xuanzong himself, sits under its own pavilion at the front in four tall blocks of black stone. The Nestorian Stele, dated 781, records in Chinese and Syriac the arrival and the fortunes of a Christian community in Tang Chang'an, and is the single most cited object in the study of pre-modern contact between China and the West; it stands in its own gallery. In the courtyard workshops you can watch a rubbing being taken - paper pressed wet into the incised stone, dried, then dabbed with ink so that the characters stay white on a black ground.
Lunch and Shuyuanmen
Lunch is at a small restaurant by the South Gate, on the ordinary Shaanxi menu of cold noodles, wheat dishes and a bowl of soup. The walk off the meal goes up Shuyuanmen, the pedestrian lane that runs from the temple gate: it takes its name from the Guanzhong Academy founded here in 1609, whose buildings still stand and are still used, and it sells the tools of the trade - brushes, ink sticks, paper, seals, stone slabs and rubbings. Calligraphers write on the paving stones with water and a mop, an exercise that leaves nothing behind and is repeated all day.
Afternoon - Yongning Gate and the wall
The city wall was built between 1370 and 1378 in the Ming dynasty, on the line of the Tang imperial city, and it is 13.74 kilometres around, 12 metres high, 12 to 14 metres wide at the top and 15 to 18 metres thick at the base, with four main gates and a watchtower every 120 metres. Yongning Gate is the south gate and the most elaborate of the four: an outer sluice tower, a crescent enceinte and an enclosed barbican stand in sequence, so that any attacker who forced the first door was sealed inside a courtyard and shot from three sides. You climb here and walk a section of the top, roughly 1.5 kilometres at an easy pace, looking down on the moat, the ring park and the traffic of the modern city. The top is wide enough for bicycles, and renting one for the full circuit is a straightforward alternative if you would rather ride than walk.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.
