Ethnic Museum

Sunday we decided to visit the Temple/Museum on our campus. It has recently been restored and is free. I'm not sure if it is a Province or City Museum. The restoration was really grand.

Restored Scholars

I had been to the non-restored part over a year ago.

Headless roof accent piece-display of restoration process

They didn't let you take pictures inside the buildings before. Now there were no signs saying not to take pictures and the building ayi didn't stop us.

baby carrier

They have some cool stuff, it's just not displayed the same as at the Smithsonian, plus there are no English signs.

Ethnic cap

So it is kind of like being the archeologist yourself and figuring out what the item is and what purpose it had. I really like the fish skin clothes.

The fish coat

This province used to have "fish people" and they lived in tree Houses and fished and ate fish and even made their clothes from fish skin. One student once drew me a picture of his dream House and I was really impressed when he told me the Story of the fish people. I said that I wanted to see the tree Houses, but he sadly wrote the government tore them down on the picture. Anyway, last year my boss gave me a gorgeous fish people art piece. It is so cool it made of fish skin and shows a woman with a baby. The museum has quite of collection of fish skin clothes. They also had some baby carriers and silk shoes that I thought were cool. Little Guy liked the bow display and the canoes. The museum is inside a temple that is "not Buddhist" according to our students. The students say they go there to pray before a test.

Praying for good grades...Pre-K is tough these days!

It was Sunday so there were no students, but there were some Japanese folks

Re-actment or photoshoot??

dressed up in old costumes. Princess was really taken with them.

So overwhemled with the Blue princess

Not into girls yet

Bashful Wisteria & the Japanese Princess

She said "Why didn't I wear my Princess dress today?" when she saw them. We usually refer to her Princess attire as The Uniform because she wears the dress 5 days out of the week. The kids thought the highlight was the fish pond and bridge. They played on the bridge until closing time and the guard started chasing people out.

Fish God??

The fish

Looking at the fish

Harbin, China