Swords are the other thing that Longquan is known for, so Mom, Dad, Siqi, and I visited a “sword factory.” Didn’t look much like a factory to me! It was a bit like a theme park, and would normally have involved demonstrations by craftspeople. Unfortunately, nobody was making anything, I think because it was supposed to rain and they weren’t expecting many visitors. To be fair, they didn’t get many visitors, so we walked around and enjoyed the gardens, the architecture, the displays, and the shop in remarkable peace and quiet. Entry was free. And we didn’t get rained on. I call it a win.
See below for strangely few photos of swords but lots of photos of a sprawling complex of Chinese buildings and gardens.
I feel like China is obsessed with officially and quantitatively rating and ranking everything, and tourist attractions are no exception. (This type of rating goes from A to AAAAA, so AAA is kinda like three out of five possible stars.)Awesome covered wooden bridge.Main gate, from the inside. (Covered wooden bridge is now behind me.)IDK, a door? Looks cool.I think it says something like “best swords anywhere on earth”. (Siqi’s photo.)Here we are! (Siqi is hiding his face from web scrapers.)Here we all are! Siqi bought a selfie stick so we’d be able to take photos like this on our trip. 🙂Ok so here are some swords.And some more swords. (I still know approximately nothing about swords.)Courtyard with a forge. Not currently in use, though.Forge again.Cool wood roof.Some sort of pavilion over a lotus pond.(Siqi’s photo.)(Siqi’s photo.)A shrine?Another cool door.Pond.Covered walkway by the pond.Greenery.This is inside that big covered wooden bridge near the entrance.I thought it was really cool that the stairs had celadon chips embedded in them.In fact, so cool that I took portrait and landscape photos, and included both in this post.But the wooden roof is pretty cool too.View from inside the covered wood bridge.Another view from inside the bridge. (We didn’t explore that area of the garden.)Cool roof on the way to the museum and shop.Didn’t take photos of the museum displays. Now we’re in the shop.Haha!They sell knives too.… and they sell celadon stuff. Mostly teacups, tea sets, and mugs (for tea).I bought this bowl because I collect small little bowls. It looks blue in the photo. It looked blue in the shop. But if you don’t put it next to green things, it looks green. It’s the most baffling thing. Kinda like the (blue/black or white/gold) dress. I guess how it appears really depends a lot on the context. Lots of things depend on context, but it’s funny when that happens to your eyes. “Seeing is believing” turns out to be surprisingly problematic.
