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Jimei
Jimei is a college town if there ever was one. In this small hamlet, Mr. Tan built 12 schools, a science center, gymnasium, library, hospital, and a navigation club. While Mr. Tan was Chinese to the core and proud of it, he was also quick to appreciate the best of the West--particularly its architecture.
All of Mr. Tan's buildings are constructed in his unique blend of Western and Chinese architecture, using red brick, white stone, and glazed tiles. But the new Jimei University makes a radical departure from the Tan tradition. This new campus looks more like a posh Oriental Holiday Resort than mere hallowed halls of learning. Aad Jimei University seems intent on giving Xiamen University a run for its money, what with its nine colleges covering everything from navigation, aquaculture, finance and economics to teacher training.
If you're up
for a grave undertaking, visit Tan Kak Kee's mausoleum, on the
Turtle Park has a marvelous display of Hui'an style carvings lining both sides of the entrance hall. These friezes depict in stunning detail various historical seenes and personages from ancient and modern China. One carving of a political session around a round table (rather lide a Socialist's Last Supper) looks so 3-dimensional and lifelike you can almost hear them debating abouthow to run us foreign devils off.
While you're in the museum, take in one of the performances (every half hour) of ancient music played upon brass bells, chimes, and zither. The costumes are as intriguing as the music. Best of all, the performance hall is airconditioned, and the show is free.
The museum's gate attendants require you to exit from a gate clear on the opposite side from where you entered. This way you are forced to wander through a narrow street lined on both sides with shops that sell everything from fashionable clothes to VCDs, dried fruits and Chinese herbs, and sundry handicrafts.
Mini-buses depart almost around the clock from Xiamen University, the harbor, or the train station for the 30 minute jaunt to Jimei. And after you've had your fill of Jimei, head north just 90 minutes to the ancient starting point of the Silk Road of the Sea-the mythical port of Zaitan...
"East is
East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."
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Jimei
just across the Xiamen Island Causeway,is the birthplace and final
resting place of Xiamen University benefactor, the patriotic and
deep pocketed Mr. Tan Kak Kee.
island
of Aoyuan, or Turtle Park. The island is shaped like a turtle, a
common shape for graves, because the turtle suggest longevity. But
I don't understand the point since they're dead already (eternally
dead, maybe?).
