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Hello, everyone! Today we are going to visit a famous museum, the Forest of Stone Tablets. The Forest of Stone Tablets Museum is a courtyard-styled structure  and covers an area of about 30, 000 square meters.  It   is situated on the site  of the Confucian Temple on Sanxue Street, Xi'an. The museum served as the Imperial Ancestral Temple in the Tang Dynasty, and later became the Confucian Temple in the Song Dynasty. In 1950, it was extended into the museum that greets us today.

The highlights of the museum of course mainly refer to the stone tablets and stone sculptures. But there are some others that might attract your interest.  For example, decorated memorial arch or pailou in Chinese, it was set up to honor men of attainments in ancient times. The structure aheadof us is the so called pailou.

If we move on, we can see some stone stakes that can date back to Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Besides the pailou and stone stakes, we can aslo see a big bell housed in the eastern pavilion. The bell  was cast in 711 A.D. and was accepted as a world famous bell at the World Bell Exhibition in 1964. A recording of its chimes ia played by the Central People’s Broadcasting Station on New Year’s Eve to usherin the New Year.

Now the main course of our visit, the stone tablets and stone scultures.

The exhibits here can be divided into two categories: stone tablets and stone sculptures. The treasure house comprises a large collection of centuries-old stone tablets. Over 3,000 stone tablets from the Han Dynasty through the Qing Dynasty are preserved, hence its name the"Forest of Stone Tablets.” The Forest of Stone Tablets is not only a treasure house of ancient Chinese calligraphy, but also a rich collection of historical documents and stone carvings of various styles. The Forest of Stone Tablets was declared a top-priority national historical monument by the State Council in March， 1961.The tablets bear evidence to the cultural achievements recorded in ancient China and the cultural exchanges between China and other countries. No tourists will take the risk of missing the Forest of Stone Tablets once they visit Xi'an.

The stone tablets are now on display in seven display rooms,  six epitaph corrdors and one tablet pavilion. Let’s  visit them one by one.

In front of the first display room is the Tablet Pavilion specially built for the Classic On Filial Piety.”

“The Classic on Filial Piety”is the largest stone tablet in the Forest of Stone Tablets. It was engraved after the handwritten copy of Emperor Xuan Zong(Li Longji) in745A.D.. The classic was compiled by Zeng Shen,  a disciple of Confucius after he attended his teacher's lecture on filial piety. Emperor Xuan Zong wrote a preface to the classic in the hopes that the country  would be governed on the principle of filial piety.The preface is followed by the body of the classic.The small characters are Emperor Xuan Zong's annotations to the classic.

The First Display Room

The first display room houses the“Kaicheng Stone Classics，”including 12  Chinese classics， namely“The Book of Changes, ”“The Book of History, ”etc. The classics， with a total number of 650, 252  characters, were engraved double-sided on 114 stone tablets.The display room also houses another classic entitled“Mencius, ”with 30, 000  characters, which was engraved on 17 stone tablets in the Qing Dynasty. This Classic and 12  others are called the“Thirteen Classics.”These 12 classics were required readings for feudal society intellectuals. Printing was quite backward in ancient times. The  classics were engraved on stones as the standard copy so that they could be well kept and men of letters could avoid errors in copying them. The stone tablets were then erected in the Chang'an Imperial Academy for the proof-reading of handwritten copies.  From the Eastern Han Dynasty onwards, the classics were engraved seven times. However, only the “ Kaicheng Stone Classics”remain intact today.

The Second Display Room

This display room mainly houses the stone tablets of calligraphy written by famous calligraphers of the Tang Dynasty. Up to today, these tablets have served as models for learners of calligraphy to follow. Several examples are the“Tablet to Huangfu Dan”by OuyangXun， the“Tablet to Master Dao Yin”by Ouyang Tong,  the son of Ouyang Xun  the“Tablet to Duobao Pagoda”and the“Tablet to the Yan's Ancestral Temple” by Yan Zhenqing the”Tablet  to the Mysterious Pagoda”by Liu Gongquan,(P11,共2张) and the world famous“the Nestorian Tablet.”

The Third Display Room

The third display room houses the stone tablets that range from the Han Dynasty to the Song Dynasty. They bear a wide variety of Chinese script forms, including seal script, official script, regular script, running script and cursive script, these stone tablets show the evolution of the Chinese writinng system.

The Fourth Display Room

This display room houses works of poetry in authentic handwriting of the well-known calligraphers from the Song through the Qing Dynasty, tablets of historical significance in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and some line engravings from the Song through the Qing Dynasties. Here  are  two line  engravings：  “Bodhidharma’s  Eastbound  Journey” and  Bodhidharma in Meditation”.

This drawing is  composed of  characters  ingeniously pieced together. It is called Jizi Kuixing Diandou Tu  (a portrait of Kuixing composedof  characters). The man's posture  implies  that he ranks first on the list of successful  candidates.This picture is vividly and ingeniously constructed.

The Fifth Display Room

The fifth display room houses the stone tablets which record such historical facts as temple  repair,  canal digging and  wall  mending  during the dynasties of Song， Yuan， Ming and Qing. They provide  valuable data of reference for the study of feudal society and local  history.

    There are also some tablets inscribed with big characters written in a single stroke by Ma Dezhao in the Qing Dynasty. They include“虎”，“寿 and“福” which  literally  mean  in English，  tiger”，”longevity” and ” happiness. ”  The characters assume a vigorous style  and offer much enjoyment to their viewers.

The Sixth Display Room

    The sixth display room mainly houses stone tablets of poetry and  verses that date back to the dynasties of Yuan, Ming and Qing. Typical examples are “A Visit to Mt. Tianguan” by Zhao Mengfu of  the Yuan Dynast,  “Farewell to Zhang Sheng in Muoling  Inn” by  Dong Qichang of the Ming Dynasty, “A letter to Wu He” by Emperor  Kang Xi of the Qing Dynasty in Mi Fu's writing style (P32) and “A Visit to  Mount Hua” by Lin Zexu. They are all  treasures of the country.

The Seventh Display Room

This last display room was built in 1982， and houses “the Secret Court Copybook of Chunhua” in the Song Dynasty.The secret copybook is made up of ten volumes.  The first five  volumes contain the works of calligraphy in seal script,  cursive script  and regular script. They were created by famous emperors，ministers and calligraphers in anciet times.The other five volumes contain the works of Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi in cursive script.They are a  collection of the works of the Chinese calligraphers before the Song Dynasty.

The Corridors of Epitaphs

Along the six tortuous corridors， there are epitaphs from the Wei  to the Qing Dynasties. In the Wei and Jin periods， it was strictly forbidden to hold extravagant funerals for the dead and erect memorial  tablets before their tombs, but to commemorate the deceased, their families  and  relatives  engraved  on the  stone  tablets words  of compliment for the dead and placed  the tablets secretly into their tombs. This type of stone engraving later gave rise to the emergence of epitaphs.

The Stone Scuplture  

This showroom was built in 1963. It houses more than 70 stone sculptures which were  originally collected from different parts of Shaanxi Province. These pieces of art are classified into two groups：  mausoleum carvings and religious carvings. They  are arranged in  chronological order. Because of our tight  schedule , I just want to introduce two stone sculptures. First,  Zhaoling Mausoleum Horeses.

When Zhaoling was built by the order of Emperor  Li Shimin， six stone horses were also sculpted in memory of the six horses， which had served him in constant wars. They were actually  created by the famous painter Yan Liben.

,and the last two were stolen and now are stored in America.

This is a statue of Li Er， the founder of the theory of Taoism，a religion of the Han nationality. The religion originated from the late Eastern Han Dynasty. The statue was probably created by Yuan Jia' er， a famous sculptor from the Western Regions.  This work of art is  one of the masterpieces among the Tang-Dynasty sculptures.