Qujiang Pool
Reconstructed Tang-era imperial garden pool where graduating scholars once floated wine cups in a poetry drinking game.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Qujiang Pool in Xi'an follows a Tang-dynasty tradition where a graduation party doubled as a marriage market: newly passed imperial scholars, the jinshi, gathered here roughly thirteen hundred years ago to float wine cups on the water and improvise poems for whoever the cup stopped in front of. You'll hear how officials, monks and noble families with unmarried daughters turned up along the same shoreline to size up the graduates, and about one young scholar, He Shican, who went deep into debt just to host his own banquet here. Trace the zigzag shoreline with your eyes and picture the crowd deciding, cup by cup, who was worth marrying into.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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