西安碑林 — Attraction in Xi'an

西安碑林博物馆 CHINA 文 CIVILISATION HISTORY-Written & curved pottery script to oracle bone scripts evolving to bronze scripts, paper written and rock stele tablets.

This is not just stele-tablets after tablets of writings. It is the arrow of China’s world view, soul-intellect and descriptive destiny!

The chains of culture across time and space in China is based Wen 文 the script form that seeds the mind, transfers wisdom, and expands the visions of civilisational might. Wen 文, from which WenMing 文明 civilisation is embedded into the China view of the universe. Then, 文化 Culture is experiential context for every generation living across the civilisation timeline. And in this museum, you can experience 文史, the evolutional history from 5000 BC to recent ages, the agonising failures to live out the wisdom scripted in history. The setbacks, defeats and success coming together for the recent half century. Feel the exuberant roller-coaster rides of history and destiny in the psyche, intellect, wisdom, spent competence and vitality... and weave thru history learned with Wen 文 crafted in stone-stele tablets, China’s...

As a preface to all my reviews of China, note that Google will not work when you get here. You will need a VPN downloaded before you get here.

This place is known as the 'forest of steles'. It contains steles (edicts written on stone) from many dynasties and is historically significant. This museum also contains a lot of Buddhist/Hindu artifacts on the east side of the compound.

You should definitely go to see the nestorian stele, possibly the first race of Christianity in China.

However, it's not very accommodating to English speaking tourists (though nothing this deep in China really is). If you go, bring a tour guide that can explain the significance of things. Also, a lot of the compound is cheap...

Besides the steles, it has an excellent gallery of Buddhist sculpture. Also a much more pleasant experience overall, as it is less crowded than most of the other museums in Xi’an.

The Beilin (Forest of Steles) Museum is a rich depository of sculpture executed in Xian and the surrounding area. Originally the museum's prominence was based on its astounding collection of steles, but over the last fifty years it has also become the custodian of a body of Buddhist stone sculpture excavated in Shaanxi Province that represents the northwestern school of carving through successive periods of history from the Northern Wei (386-534) forward, with particular emphasis on the Northern Zhou (557-581) and Tang...