Beijing souvenir

We went to visit Beijing in 1993, with the boys ( who looked like twins and were the subject of thousands of Chinese photos) and with the parents-in-law. It was the time when you still had a state guide assigned to you and there weren’t any skyscrapers in the centre of Beijing yet. Somehow apart from the official guide we were picked up by a university professor who took us to interesting places. I was going to guide in an exhibition about the classic Chinese scholar in the National Museum in Singapore and anything connected with what such a scholar would have had in his study room was obviously interesting. This is a modern copy of what a scholar would have on his desk to make ink from his inkstone, a small water bowl with a duck shaped spoon to mix the scraped bits of the inkstone with water to make ink for calligraphy. It’s one of my favourite souvenirs from that visit.

For MonoMonday with thanks to steveng for hosting this month.

Thanks very much for the kind comments and stars for yesterday’s anemone.