Thank you for this amazing post. Dulan Sugar Factury Cafe is one of my favorite hang out places in Dulan.
Hope one day we shall meet there. Happy Chinese New Year.

The captions included more of the STORY behind the reliefs, as well as the meaning of the horses’ names; it’s hard to imagine modern Chinese people using names like Saluzi and Quanmaogua for horses. Such names apparently rolled off the tongue in the early Tang.

It’s kind of funny how tough this guy was.

Obviously, UPenn somehow obtained the two best horse reliefs. No wonder the people in XiAn are grumbling.

You can also see the blurb they have on the flickr site, if you have access…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pennmuseum/sets/72157622242994578/

The UPenn Musuem’s website is blocked where I am living in China. I’ll try to open it the next time I go to another city; that generally does the trick.

I tried to access the musuem’s website back when I wrote this little Li ShiMin blurb, I tried again this morning, and the results were the same–the page starts to appear, but then a little box jumps out for an instant, informing me that the Internet can’t operate this website. Then I hear the first note from Beethoven’s Fifth, and the page shuts down. People send me links that I can’t open all the time. The more dedicated Internet enthusiasts among us have set up proxy servers, but they report other problems with those. I could benfit from the Upenn Museum’s website. On the other hand, bad Internet service has its advantages–we are exposed to less misinformation.

Yes, I am also speading misleading and incomplete information, but I compensate with anecdotes about Motley Crue and other hair metal bands that had a major influence on Chinese history.