Chengdu
Chengdu is a city in Sichuan, a province we all know well thanks to the earthquake last year. However, news is that the entire area is now completely rebuilt and the entire infrastructure - everything - is back to running properly again.
Go, China!
Apparently Chengdu is a fascinating city to visit and, apart from the panda sanctuaries, the giant stone Buddha, and spectacular scenery, the city itself has the most gorgeous little alleyways, great traditional tea houses, and the best spicy hotpot restaurants on the planet, and so it's well worth a visit.
However, those are just the bonus because they're not the reason Chengdu has come onto my radar. I now desperately want to visit this city because of a little town thirty miles outside of Chengdu.
This place is called Guanghan and it was once the capital of an ancient and now extinct people called The Shu. And what makes The Shu so interesting is that their claim to fame was that they arrived on earth on a spaceship, escaping their own dying planet or something ...
... and now the little town of Guanghan has gathered together all the Shu artifacts and built a new museum called Sanxingdui to house them. And word is that it's very, very interesting.
See why I want so badly to see it all for myself?
And even if The Shu weren't from deep outer space, these material remains of their culture are so strange and interesting, it's apparently worth going to all the trouble of getting yourself there anyway.
My own position on there being intelligent life out there in space is that ... well, even if the chances are 13 billion to one or something, and I'm sure they're less than that, what with space being infinite, it means there are still millions of planets out there that could have intelligent life! Duh!
And the chances of these ETs coming to earth? Two counts on that score.
1) Have you ever read any ancient Sumerian legends? They are totally mmmmmh! Particularly all that Archangel stuff! It's all the most odd and uncomfortably challenging reading!
2) And then there's that truly bizarre Irish history book Kabala Labor Erin - or rather Lebor Gabála Érenn - otherwise known as "The Book of Invasions".
Have you ever read this book? I've given you the link to the Wikipedia entry, but you can ignore most of that because it's the Roman Catholic version of events. The real story? Apparently Celtic Christian monks went around Ireland in about 300 AD gathering up all the histories of the different races of Ireland and put them together in a single book, and then, 300 years later, Roman Catholics found this book quite offensive so rewrote it, along with a great many other Irish legends, to make it much more "Christian", and, after the rewrite, they tossed the original book. But then, in the 11th century, Roman Catholics again decided it still wasn't "Christian enough" and so rewrote it again to make it a better mesh with the Bible and tossed the other ... and now, well, it's pretty much nonsense.
But what makes this book so interesting in regard to earth-visiting ETs, is ... well, you have to read it to see what I mean. It's all kinda normal historical stuff, with tribe after tribe arriving to escape disasters or whatever, in the Mediterranean and Middle East regions, and all fighting and disease and yadda yadda yadda ...
... and then suddenly, right in the middle, there's an account of the Fennian or Formosian Invasion or whatever ... and suddenly we're in the middle of Star Wars because ... well, it's all spaceships and laser beams and totally mmmmh! stuff. Odd, odd, odd! I tossed this book at that exact point about five times during the course of my life because it was such arrant rubbish.
However, I had to come back to it because my own Milesian Irish history came in after these Spaceship Invasions, and that's what I was really wanting to read about.
But let me tell you about one of these "tossing away the book in anger" times! Ranting in fury, I said to Keith, "And what makes it so particularly annoying is the geography of this stupid story is all wrong." and Keith, who is often very wise, said "Maybe it's a story they brought with them. Ask yourself, where in the world is the geography right?"
Even though I was so cross with this book, I can never resist a mystery so I did, pulling all the aggravating geographical features out of "Lebor Gabála Érenn" and trying to find them all in one place somewhere else in the world ...
... and there was a place that matched:
HK Magazine this week has given all the details for getting to Guanghan from Chengdu:
A bus departs from Chengdu's North Bus Station every fifteen minutes for the hour-long ride to the town. But there is also a special shuttle bus specifically for Sanxingdui Museum that departs from Xinnanmen Bus Station at 8.30 am and 3.00 pm.
Interested?
Go, China!
Apparently Chengdu is a fascinating city to visit and, apart from the panda sanctuaries, the giant stone Buddha, and spectacular scenery, the city itself has the most gorgeous little alleyways, great traditional tea houses, and the best spicy hotpot restaurants on the planet, and so it's well worth a visit.
However, those are just the bonus because they're not the reason Chengdu has come onto my radar. I now desperately want to visit this city because of a little town thirty miles outside of Chengdu.
This place is called Guanghan and it was once the capital of an ancient and now extinct people called The Shu. And what makes The Shu so interesting is that their claim to fame was that they arrived on earth on a spaceship, escaping their own dying planet or something ...
... and now the little town of Guanghan has gathered together all the Shu artifacts and built a new museum called Sanxingdui to house them. And word is that it's very, very interesting.
See why I want so badly to see it all for myself?
And even if The Shu weren't from deep outer space, these material remains of their culture are so strange and interesting, it's apparently worth going to all the trouble of getting yourself there anyway.
My own position on there being intelligent life out there in space is that ... well, even if the chances are 13 billion to one or something, and I'm sure they're less than that, what with space being infinite, it means there are still millions of planets out there that could have intelligent life! Duh!
And the chances of these ETs coming to earth? Two counts on that score.
1) Have you ever read any ancient Sumerian legends? They are totally mmmmmh! Particularly all that Archangel stuff! It's all the most odd and uncomfortably challenging reading!
2) And then there's that truly bizarre Irish history book Kabala Labor Erin - or rather Lebor Gabála Érenn - otherwise known as "The Book of Invasions".
Have you ever read this book? I've given you the link to the Wikipedia entry, but you can ignore most of that because it's the Roman Catholic version of events. The real story? Apparently Celtic Christian monks went around Ireland in about 300 AD gathering up all the histories of the different races of Ireland and put them together in a single book, and then, 300 years later, Roman Catholics found this book quite offensive so rewrote it, along with a great many other Irish legends, to make it much more "Christian", and, after the rewrite, they tossed the original book. But then, in the 11th century, Roman Catholics again decided it still wasn't "Christian enough" and so rewrote it again to make it a better mesh with the Bible and tossed the other ... and now, well, it's pretty much nonsense.
But what makes this book so interesting in regard to earth-visiting ETs, is ... well, you have to read it to see what I mean. It's all kinda normal historical stuff, with tribe after tribe arriving to escape disasters or whatever, in the Mediterranean and Middle East regions, and all fighting and disease and yadda yadda yadda ...
... and then suddenly, right in the middle, there's an account of the Fennian or Formosian Invasion or whatever ... and suddenly we're in the middle of Star Wars because ... well, it's all spaceships and laser beams and totally mmmmh! stuff. Odd, odd, odd! I tossed this book at that exact point about five times during the course of my life because it was such arrant rubbish.
However, I had to come back to it because my own Milesian Irish history came in after these Spaceship Invasions, and that's what I was really wanting to read about.
But let me tell you about one of these "tossing away the book in anger" times! Ranting in fury, I said to Keith, "And what makes it so particularly annoying is the geography of this stupid story is all wrong." and Keith, who is often very wise, said "Maybe it's a story they brought with them. Ask yourself, where in the world is the geography right?"
Even though I was so cross with this book, I can never resist a mystery so I did, pulling all the aggravating geographical features out of "Lebor Gabála Érenn" and trying to find them all in one place somewhere else in the world ...
... and there was a place that matched:
YEMEN!
Anyway, my mind went into overdrive because Yemen is mighty close to Sumer, and the Sumerian Archangel stuff is about these strange folk having their spaceships destroyed, and the "Lebor Gabála Érenn" has an account of people destroying spaceships and it's one of those odd meshes that, well, makes you go "Mmmmmh!" Yes?
Makes you long to read the original 3rd century account, yes? I have heard that there is still the 6th century copy of "Lebor Gabála Érenn" in existence someplace, well hidden, but no one can tell me where ... but the original story? The 3rd century version? Actually, I'm pretty much convinced that one is still around someplace because, back then, they wouldn't have destroyed any book, would they? Books were too infinitely precious back then. Yes?
And now it turns out that China has it's own "ETs coming to live on earth" story and it's up there for all of us to see for ourselves just 30 miles outside Chengdu.
Makes you long to read the original 3rd century account, yes? I have heard that there is still the 6th century copy of "Lebor Gabála Érenn" in existence someplace, well hidden, but no one can tell me where ... but the original story? The 3rd century version? Actually, I'm pretty much convinced that one is still around someplace because, back then, they wouldn't have destroyed any book, would they? Books were too infinitely precious back then. Yes?
And now it turns out that China has it's own "ETs coming to live on earth" story and it's up there for all of us to see for ourselves just 30 miles outside Chengdu.
HK Magazine this week has given all the details for getting to Guanghan from Chengdu:
A bus departs from Chengdu's North Bus Station every fifteen minutes for the hour-long ride to the town. But there is also a special shuttle bus specifically for Sanxingdui Museum that departs from Xinnanmen Bus Station at 8.30 am and 3.00 pm.
Interested?
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1 comment:
Count me in for sometime next year!
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