History inscribed in stone

Suzhou's tablet museum chronicles the country's past

They're the rocks of the ages - chiseled into polished slabs etched with words from eras past.

Time capsules that have lasted until today.

The Suzhou Museum of Inscribed Stone Tablets in Jiangsu province's Suzhou is a place where their story survives.

Perhaps because they carved it in stone. Pretty durable stuff.

The museum is located in the region's Confucian Temple. The site was also an academy for local intellectuals built in the Song Dynasty (AD 420-479).

The fantastic four among its 1,300 artifacts are the "four great Song tablets".

They include Asia's oldest astronomical map and China's oldest national map.

Tablets' ghosts are also rendered as over 2,000 rubbings dating to the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

The Confucian temple is said to be the largest outside the sage's hometown, Shandong province's Qufu.

Today, it's continuing to script new chapters in the sites' place in history. It's a place of pilgrimage where people still hold rituals devoted to the past.

liuzhihua@chinadaily.com.cn

Researchers and visitors at the Suzhou Museum of Inscribed Stone Tablets in Jiangsu province. Photos by Gao Erqiang / China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 06/24/2016 page15)