The pharmacy and its tiles

By:  March 17, 2024 Categories: 

The 300-year-old Shangchizhai Pharmacy (上池斋药店) in Xinghua (兴化) in Jiangsu, still in use today.

The tiles on the floor are said to be imported, I actually found this out later. I did not take a good look at the floor ones and now really regret it. (The ones on the counter caught my eye, as they’re also similar to Delftware, but they’re from the Qing Dynasty as pointed out on Twitter). Yet now I desperately want to find out where the floor tiles were made, and how they ended up in a three-century-old pharmacy in a small inland city in China.

Above the entrance, a deer holding fungi.

We were actually in Xinghua to see the rapeseed fields, but the fields are still green. A lady told us: “Normally it’s all blooming now, but the weather has been very cold here in Northern Jiangsu (苏北).”

She advised us to come back in 5 days, but I don’t think we’ll drive the 340 kilometers again next week.

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