Stele Forest

Stele Forest
An entrance to the Stele Forest
Chinese碑林
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinBēilín
Wade–GilesPei-lin
An ink rubbing of one of the calligraphy stela at the Beilin Museum in Xi'an, called the "God of Literature Pointing the Dipper." It depicts the figure, made up of the characters describing the four Confucian virtues, "pointing the dipper" (an expression for coming first in the imperial civil service examinations).

The Stele Forest or Beilin Museum is a museum for steles and stone sculptures in Beilin District in Xi'an, Northwest China. The museum, which is housed in a former Confucian Temple, has housed a growing collection of Steles since 1087. By 1944 it was the principal museum for Shaanxi province. Due to the large number of steles, it was officially renamed the Forest of Stone Steles in 1992. Altogether, there are 3,000 steles in the museum, which is divided into seven exhibitions halls that display works of Chinese calligraphy, painting and historical records.[1]

  1. ^ "Xi'an beilin Museum(西安碑林博物馆)". foreignercn.com. Retrieved 6 August 2014.