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Du Fu Thatched Cottage, a museum of aroma at this time of year

By Huang Zhiling (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-02-07 09:51

Lan Niang, a resident of Chengdu, capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province, feels her home city extremely cozy at this time of the year.

People of different ages look on while two senior citizens play Chinese chess in the museum. [Photo/Huang Zhiling]

"It is more like a deserted city during the Spring Festival holiday when people working here have returned to their hometowns and many locals have left for tourism destinations. Hence it is unusual easy to find a taxi in the city known nationwide for people's plight in calling a taxi," she told www.chinadaily.com.cn.

For quiet people like Lan, the time-honored Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum by the Flowering Bathing Brook in western Chengdu is more tranquil at this time of the year and is more like the pure land dotted with wintersweet trees.

The museum, known as the sacred land of Chinese literature because Du Fu, one of the greatest Chinese poets, built a cottage there and lived for nearly four years during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), has a long history of planting wintersweet treets.

During his stay in his famous cottage in Chengdu, Du planted lots of wintersweet trees leaving behind masterpieces on them. People of later generations have planted numerous wintersweet trees in the museum in memory of the poetic saint, according to Jia Lan, curator of the museum..

Feeling the aroma of the wintersweet and appreciating poems in couplets in different parts of the museum, one cannot help feeling the aroma of poetry and feeling his or her heart purified, many visitors say.

In addition to the wintersweet and poetry, the sugar painting, classical toys and other traditional activities held in the museum during the festival have not only attracted children but made adults recall the good old days.