Gratianus

This Friday, the Yale program made an excursion to Prince Gong's Mansion in central Beijing. This is a preserved Qing-dynasty princely residence which is about as close as one can get today to the mansions described in the famous novel Dream of Red Mansions. My colleague Tina Lu teaches a course on this novel, so her students were also welcomed to the excursion. It was a very pleasant excursion; we were allowed to stroll freely, without a guide. I lost track of the group when I wanted to make some photographs, but I later ran into Ningping.

I just had to photograph the library. There is a very unique document inside it, but we were not allowed to go inside to look at it, but I glimpsed the monter. Not sure exactly what the document is.



Me at one of the gates in the compound. The mansion consists of a sequence of courtyards with buildings around it, followed by a large garden.




I saw this kind of stone, from Taihu lake, Jiangsu province, in Southern China, in several of the courtyards. Such stones are thought to be very beautiful.



The main gate to the garden is built as an imitation of the westernizing style of the architecture that the Jesuits helped produce for the emperor's Old Summer Palace.



A manmade lake in the garden. Must be really nice and cool around it in the summer.



A dramatic walkway among rocks in the garden. Are such things also imitation of westernizing gardens that I suppose the Jesuits might have helped produce?



The lake had colonies of ducks.



This is an authentic Peking Duck.



Our director Ningping.



Sorry, this is me again.




Outside the mansion, the rickshaw drivers were looking for fares. I rode a real rickshaw (meaning that also locals used them for errands) when I visited Yogyakarta in 1990, so I did not feel the need to try one.