The Lintong Museum (daily 8am-5.30pm; ) nearby provides a rewarding diversion; turn right out of the Huaqing Pool complex, then run a gauntlet of souvenir sellers for 150m and you’ll see the museum on your right.
Though small and relatively expensive, it’s worth it for a varied collection that includes silver chopsticks and scissors, a bronze jar decorated with human faces, a crossbow and numerous Han funerary objects, including ceramic figures of horses, dogs, ducks and pigs. The best exhibit, a Tang reliquary unearthed nearby, is in the second of the three rooms. Inside a stone stupa about a meter high, decorated with images of’ everyday life, was found a silver coffin with a steep sloping roof, fussily ornamented with silver spirals, strings of pearls and gold images of monks on the side. Inside this, a gold coffin a few inches long held a tiny glass jar with a handful of dust at the bottom. These delicate relics, and the dust, optimistically labeled “ashes of the Buddha”, though crudely exhibited in what look like Perspex lunch boxes, are more interesting than anything at Huaqing Pool
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